Gaye Strathearn: Finding the Sacred in the Sabbath

Morgan Jones Pearson

In her book "Insights From a Prophet's Life," Sheri Dew shares that President Russell M. Nelson once struggled with the question of how does a busy doctor handle the Sabbath day? "He studied list of do's and don'ts but the issue remained complicated and complex given his profession. Then one day Dr. Nelson came across a passage in Exodus that triggered new spiritual understanding: 'Verily, my Sabbath see shall keep for it as a sign between me and you.' When he realized what he did on Sunday was a sign to the Lord about how he felt about Him, his dilemma was resolved. He said, 'I no longer needed a list of do's and don'ts. When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath. I simply asked myself, What sign do I want to give to God? That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.' He determined he would not operate on anyone on Sunday unless he knew the person would not live until Monday. If a patient came in with a bleeding aorta or crushed chest, yes, he would operate on Sunday. Every cardiac surgeon operated on Sundays to save lives that wouldn't last another day. Sometimes the bleeding had to be stopped immediately. But if the patient could wait until Monday, Dr. Nelson waited. 'Once I had the Sabbath day concept figured out,' he explained, 'and understood that what I did on Sunday was a sign of my love for God. I realized that just as it wouldn't show my love for Him by operating on Sunday when it could wait until Monday. It also wouldn't show the love for God if I let someone die on Sunday who could have been saved? For a cardiovascular surgeon that scripture was life-saving for my conscience and for my heart." Today, we explore the commandment of the Sabbath day further with one of my favorite scholars, Gaye Strathearn. Gay Strathearn is a professor in the Department of ancient scripture at BYU, Dr. Strathearn grew up in Red Cliffs, Australia. She received her PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University. Her research focuses on gospel scholarship of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. She compiled the new book of essays all about the Sabbath day titled "Sacred Time: The Sabbath as a Perpetual Covenant," which is available now at Deseret Book.

This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so excited to have Gaye Strathearn on the line with me today. Gaye, welcome.

Gaye Strathearn

Thanks Morgan. Great to be here.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, this is so fun for me because I had the chance a few months ago to work with Gaye briefly for a BYUtv show. And I learned so much from you Gaye and so I selfishly wanted another chance to learn from you and I actually have I've kind of become a Gaye Strathearn fan. And I just look for all the different things that you're speaking on so that I can learn from them. So this is a selfish endeavor, and you're gracious to be willing to do it. But I actually wanted to start with your personal background. I learned as I was preparing for this interview that you were actually a physical therapist prior to a visit to the BYU Jerusalem center and there you fell in love with the study of the Bible. What was it about that experience that changed the course of your life from that point forward?

Gaye Strathearn

So I actually has to go back a little bit before then. Okay, because so when I was 11, I discovered the scriptures and began that big actually began my love of studying them. But there was never ever a thought that this could ever be a career in any way. So in 1987, my friend and I decided to backpack around the world. Physical therapists in Australia do this all the time. And so we went to Israel for the first time. That was our first real stop. We just had such an amazing, wonderful experience. We were too poor for a tour guide. Right? So we just stayed in youth hostels, and we went out every day and had a Bible in one hand and a Let's Go Europe in the other hand, and we just looked to see what we could find right? And it was just so amazing, and I learned so much there and felt the spirit of the place. So when I came home, then Elder James E. Faust came and said that the Jerusalem center was opening up and he said This isn't just for BYU students, the rules have changed a little bit. But he says any of you young women who want to go, you should go. And I had these tingles up and down my spine, and I'm going, Oh, that's me. And I actually went up and talked to him, which I very rarely do. And he told me who to contact. And so within about two or three months, I was at the Jerusalem Center as a student. And that really was the magnificent change because even though I'd been there before, learning from a teacher was just really good. For me, it was about seeing somebody of faith being able to deal with tricky places in the Scriptures. And so that really was kind of the genesis for all of that, because I came home from Jerusalem, went on my mission, came back. And so you know, I'm in a small branch of the Church, I'll probably always have a chance to teach. And so I'm going to go and learn as much as I can, because I already have a career. And then things just kind of snowballed from that. I came here. I loved it. I loved what I was learning. I asked if I could teach part time in the religion department, because I went on and got a master's as well. And then it just all happened from there.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, I think that's amazing. I want to go back to the beginning, like you said, what was it that made you fall in love with the Bible as an 11 year old?

Gaye Strathearn

And that's a weird question. That's weird answer actually. Well, because I had a friend, and in our very small branch, and they were new converts, their family. And when he was about to turn 12, his parents, we did everything together, and his parents bought him a missionary set of scriptures. In those days, they were totally different. But these are the ones with the thumb tabs and really fine pages and things like that. And because he had them, I wanted them. So I went to my mom and said, Can I get some missionary scriptures? And she said, No, we've got plenty of copies of scriptures out there. And I'm going, hang on a minute, isn't it a righteous question? Why would you say no to that? So I kept bugging her. And what I should say is my dad was out of work at this time, and money was tight. And so she kept saying, no, no, no. And then I thought, I need to rethink my approach. And so I came back and I said, Can I if I save up myself? Can I buy them? She said, oh yeah, fine. So I saved up for them. And I remember the day that I went up and got my triple combination, and bought it. And I was so excited about it. And at that point, mom knew that I was serious. So for Christmas, she gave me a Bible as well. And then I thought, well, I've got missionary scriptures, what am I going to do with them. And so my brother in law, I saw his copies of the scripture, and he'd color coordinated everything and right, Green was baptism, and red was resurrection, yellow was Book of Mormon and that kind of stuff. So I went through, and I started copying all of his notes into my own set of scriptures. And something happened when I did that. I started seeing, Oh, that's a really cool scripture. And oh! So I started learning things. And that just kind of started me on this journey that I had no idea where it would take me, but I learned to love the scriptures, and particularly the Bible actually.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Amazing. Well, I'm sure that there are countless things that you could share with us that you learned just from the study of religion. But you went on, like you said, to receive a bachelor's and master's degree from BYU in Near Eastern Studies. And then you received a PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University. And I thought it was interesting, you said that the best piece of advice you received was to always remember that everyone brings assumptions to the table when studying religion, and I love this quote from you, "Those who have faith bring assumptions to the text, but so do those who espouse a purely academic approach. While in graduate school, I had to learn the academic approach. But I realized that I didn't have to accept all of their assumptions: that there is no God, there are no such thing as miracles, that prophecy does not exist and that Jesus never considered himself to be the Son of God." I wondered, obviously, those are all assumptions that I'm sure that you dealt with. How would you say that understanding this, that we don't have to accept assumptions but that we can see things from both an academic approach as well as a religious approach, how can that help us better engage in religious dialogue with others that may believe differently than we do?

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah, well, I think that one of the things is that if we realize what the assumptions are that we bring, right? it's often easy to talk about assumptions that other people have. But I have assumptions. When I read the scriptures as well, I have assumptions in that I believe that there is a God, I believe in all of those things that I talked about: prophecy and Revelation and things like that. But I also, as a Latter-day Saint have assumptions because I come to the Scriptures through the lens of the restoration. And one of the things that I've learned is just because that's my lens doesn't mean that it's everybody else's lens. So I have to take the time, I think, to be able to try and see where are they coming from? And what lenses are they using, and then I can see where they're coming from, and why they interpret in the way that they do and why I interpret it a little bit differently. And I think that conversation with people can be really enlightening because it helps us to, or it helps me to develop holy envy as Krister Stendahl used to say, for others and their religions and their interpretations. And as I've done that, I've seen things that are going oh, from a restoration perspective, this is what this might mean. And it helps me see things differently that try to give me nuance to my understanding of the Scriptures as well.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Right, that makes complete sense. Another thing that I thought was super interesting was you said that another of the most valuable things you learned from graduate school were the way that scholars approach text with questions. So I wondered how were the questions that you observed in that environment different than the questions that you had asked up to that point? And how has that changed the way that you ask questions?

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah, that's really good. Well, I think, number one, it is recognizing how important context is. Scholars have kind of this approach that they give these two fancy words. One is exegesis. And that means studying the Scriptures from the perspective of the original author, and the original audience. In other words, try to understand what was the original author trying to get their audience to understand by writing that, right? And then there's another way of doing it, they say eisegesis, and eisegesis is how do I, as a reader, approach your texts to try and insert my life and my experience into the text and use that as the lens through which I interpret Scripture, right. And both of those approach approaches are really, really important. I think Latter-day Saints are really, really good at the eisegesis part of it, right? What does this apply to me in my life, but what I found is that the exegesis opens up all sorts of different ways of seeing and understanding that then helped helped me inform the process of trying to say, okay, so what does this mean for me, rather than just kind of cherry picking verses and kind of saying, Okay, here's the verse that confirms what I want to say in a talk. Right? We take it out of its context, I found keeping it in its context have opened up so many avenues of nuance for interpreting scripture.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I love that so much. I have some Christian friends who have kind of emphasized to me our need to look at things in context. And I think that it makes a big difference. Gaye, as we talk for the rest of this conversation, we're going to be focused on a book of essays that you've recently compiled, all about the Sabbath day. And my thought is that it would be great to have you model for us the way that you approach questions throughout this conversation. So I wondered, initially, what were you setting out to discover in your study of the Sabbath? What was the question that you brought into your study of the Sabbath day?

Gaye Strathearn

Okay, yeah, that's good. It goes back to a group of three colleagues here in religious education and myself. We were invited to come up to the Church Office Building and meet with the Area Coordinating Council that consisted then of some members of the Twelve, members of the Presidency of the Seventy and some others who came and they wanted us to talk to them about the Sabbath day. So they said, we've already had someone come and talk to us from a Jewish perspective. But we'd like to know other things about the Sabbath. And so my assignment was to talk about the Sabbath in early Christianity. And so you can imagine that was kind of an exciting, but also very daunting experience. And so we all went to work preparing, and it took me months and months to prepare for what ended up being seven minutes. Seven minutes. And then each of us gave a seven minute presentation. And then we had a discussion, which was just a wonderful experience. But I came away thinking, yeah, seven minutes, I've done all this work. And I didn't even scratch the surface there. And so it just started me thinking about so could this be helpful to anyone. And we talked about it as a group trying to put what we'd learned into a volume. For me personally, that took a bit of time, actually, until it happened. But I started thinking about, particularly the Sabbath controversies in the New Testament. And I wanted to know more about that, because sometimes we read the New Testament from a very monochromatic perspective, meaning, Jesus is Good. Well, that's always eternally true. But Pharisees are the bad guys. And I struggle with that a little bit, because the Pharisees, they're a group of people, right, they're not one person. And they're not all the same. And we have to, I think there's value in seeing them in terms of the nuanced perspective. So with that in mind, then I went back and started looking at so what was like, like, in the first century BC, and the first century AD, that is kind of laying the context for how Jews were understanding what it means to keep the Sabbath day holy. And it was, it was much more complex. And I have to say, at the end of this, I have a lot of sympathy for the Pharisees and other Jews, because what they tried to do is always already in their day, the Sabbath command was already really very ancient. We think it's ancient compared to us, but it was over 1000 years old by the time we get to that late Second Temple period, their world had changed since the time of Moses, they were living under occupation by other groups, they'd had an experience that being a Jew or living your religion was outlawed, penalty of death. But they understood how important Exodus talks about that the Sabbath Day is a sign of the covenant, and it's an everlasting sign. And so we have some sources that help us see, it's kind of them trying to think through, how do we maintain our covenant identity in a world that is trying to destroy it? What are the things that we need to compromise on but but more importantly, what are those solid things about our covenant that we, if we compromise on them, we cease to exist? And one of those was the Sabbath day. Well, how do you do that? And so they're thinking through, okay, this is about covenant loyalty, that's really important for them, as it is for us today. And so how do we live in this world and maintain the Sabbath as a sign of the covenant? But what does that mean in our day because the Old Testament didn't give them much help, right? Like most times, it taught principles, but it didn't teach much about application. And so there were about six things that the Old Testament told them to do. Don't gather Manna on the Sabbath. Well, that hadn't been in place for a thousand years. So do we throw that out? Or do we reinterpret it right? Don't gather firewood, don't light a fire, don't plow or harvest and don't participate in commerce carrying burdens. But what they're finding in their world is that didn't always apply to us. So how do we make sure that the Sabbath remains relevant for us? And we have these texts here kind of trying to talk through and saying, Okay, so we don't have manna now, but does that apply to—do we take that and interpret that in terms of food in general? What does that mean for preparing ourselves for the Sabbath and food. And one of the difficulties is that the Old Testament manna wasn't the only thing that they were eating in the wilderness, they were also eating quail, but there's no mention of any Sabbath command about eating quail. And so they're just trying to work through those kinds of things in how do we keep this alive and relevant for us and our circumstances. And so we see their list of thou shalt not, kind of starting to grow a little bit, because they're saying, Well, what about this? And one example is a great one is going to war. Is that something that we can do on the Sabbath? And initially, the answer was no, no. And so Jews, and we have examples of this, that their foreign enemies understood this, so chose to go to war with them to engage in a battle on the Sabbath day, because they knew Jews wouldn't respond. And so thousands of people are dying. And so the Jews that we see as a community are going saying, well hang on a minute. If we just sit back and let people do this to us soon enough, we'll all be destroyed. And how is the Sabbath going to be a perpetual covenant? And how is it going to be a sign of our covenant if we're all wiped out? So then we see them kind of coming back and saying, Okay, maybe we can defend ourselves, but we're not going to initiate being offensive in our war. And we just see these kinds of things playing out, as they try to grapple with how do we keep this covenant relevant, both in terms of a sign to what we want to say to God about our commitment to our covenant, but also a sign to ourselves about what the covenant means to us as individuals and communities? And then also, what is the covenant as a sign to those around me? What is it that I or they want to say to the people around them about their relationship with God, so these are all complex issues. And by the time of Jesus, there was no one set way of interpreting what you do on the Sabbath. We just see this conversation going on, of which Jesus comes and becomes a part of so sometimes he agrees with their interpretations, other times he doesn't. And so seeing it as a much more fluid thing, rather than a black and white thing was really, really helpful for me.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Okay, Gaye, there's so much that I want to unpack from what you just taught. The first thing is, I will be honest, and say that prior to reading your essay in this book, I had never totally thought of the Sabbath as a covenant. And you point out that it's literally called that in Exodus, that it's a sign between God and the children of Israel. What do we need to know about the covenantal nature of the Sabbath day in order to fully grasp this doctrine?

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah, well, I think it is, well, when we're talking about covenant, we have lots of names for it. You know, it was a covenant God has made with Adam, with Abraham. So we call it the Abrahamic covenants. That's what we use a lot now. But we also have the Mosaic Covenant, we also have talk of the new and everlasting covenant, we're not talking about different covenants, we're talking about all of them, aspects and emphases of the covenant that we want. And the covenant is that we are willing, that God wants us, to bind ourselves to Him, so that He can help us become eternally what He knows we can be. So it's in the Old Testament, it talks about so that God can sanctify His people. And in Hebrew that means to make them holy. So He wants us to become not just mortals, but holy beings. And in Leviticus, he talks about this covenant with Israel so that you can be holy because I am holy. So in other words, He wants us to become as He is. And so the covenant is about Him being there to promise and help us make this transformation from all that we need to learn in a mortal experience, but in the process, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, helping us to be transformed into something qualitatively different than we are as mere mortals. I don't know if that's the best way of saying it. But it's this covenant of us becoming as God is.

Morgan Jones Pearson

No, I think that's wonderful because it gives us an idea of kind of what is promised on both sides, what what we stand to gain and what we are expected to give. Gaye, you mentioned kind of the the idea that it shouldn't be, we shouldn't view it so much as black and white. And I think that how we observe the Sabbath seems to be a tricky one. There are commandments, I think, like tithing, that seem to be pretty straightforward and well defined in terms of we all know what 10 percent is. But the Sabbath, on the other hand, I think can feel pretty subjective. And like you said, this is something that people have struggled with throughout history. So why might that struggle be a part of the importance of the commandment? How might our need to figure out how to observe it be part of what we stand to gain from living it? Does that make sense?

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah. So can I tell you a story here? This is a personal story.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Please, I'd love that.

Gaye Strathearn

So I told you that I liked studying the scriptures from a fairly young experience, and my views of the Sabbath, as a teenager, were fairly rigid. Right? This is what you can do. This is what you shouldn't do. Going to church is at the very center of that. But my dad was not a member of the Church. And so my mother and grandmother joined the Church when my oldest sister was about four, long before I was born. And this is dating me. But when I was a teenager, this was before all of the consolidations of the Sabbath, right? The meetings on the service. So we would go to church in the morning for Sunday school, and then we'd come home, have lunch, and then we'd go back in the evening for sacrament meeting in the evening, which was a very Christian, ancient Christian thing to do. Just saying. So as as a teenager, I was pretty focused on Okay, Sabbath day. But what that meant is that for my dad, the Sabbath became something that distanced his family from him because we're in church all day. And so my dad loved to fish. He loved to do that. And so one day a year, his fishing club had their Christmas party, if you want to call it that. But they did that on Sunday. And it was at an island at the beach, I'm from Australia, there's beaches everywhere, right? And so dad wanted us to come. And I was a bit of a pill, honestly, as a teenager, and I didn't want to go because my view of that would be breaking the Sabbath, I'm gonna burn in hell if I do that, and I don't want to do it. And so I went, kicking and screaming, I guess, metaphorically. So there came a time though, because I was young, I don't know if I remember it but I don't remember us talking about the Sabbath in terms of it being a sign of the covenant. For me, the Sabbath was Do this, do this, do this. And I remember very clearly reading Exodus 31, in my personal study, and this idea of it being a sign, and all of the sudden, I started thinking, Oh, I think you're looking at this the wrong way Gaye. And I thought, if what I do on the Sabbath is a sign of my covenantal committal, then, isn't it also a sign of my covenant or commitment that one day a year I spend with my dad doing things that are important to him, and building on that relationship? And so everything changed for me from that point. I mean, it wasn't that we went to the beach. Personally, we were sitting around eating, talking, enjoying one another's company. That's what it was for me. But I am so glad that I learned that lesson before it was too late. So that I could share that experience with my dad and build my relationship with him. And for the other 50, whatever it is, two weeks of the year, I was in church and enjoying that experience. But so this is what first started me thinking about, maybe there are different ways of understanding what the Sabbath means. Does that make sense?

Morgan Jones Pearson

Yes, ma'am. Absolutely.

Gaye Strathearn

And so then I started thinking about it being an eternal covenant in one way I'd I always thought about that as being, well, it's a covenant that's going to be everlasting. Right? It lasts forever. But recently I've been thinking about, well, it's an eternal covenant or a perpetual covenant, because throughout a lifetime, I change. So how I understood the service when I was in primary is different than as a teenager, and I had that experience. As I learned, and grew, my understanding, changed and deepened and became more nuanced. And so how I thought about the Sabbath on a mission as a missionary or whatnot isn't the same as how I think about it now because I'm different. And so if this is a part of our covenant journey, all of us are at different places on that covenant journey. And our understanding of the Sabbath is going to be at different places. And so let's have people grow into their understanding. So that that then helps to reflect their choices on how they choose to keep the Sabbath day holy.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Right. Well, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I think we just recently had a...my husband and I teach five and six year old primary class. And we recently had a lesson, and I kind of was battling with myself about how do you teach the Sabbath to five year olds, because you don't want it to seem like a list of do's and don'ts. And so I love the way that you put that. Gaye, while church members seem well, actually, let me back up. You cite early on in this book, a Deseret News poll that found that in the 38 years from 1978 to 2016, which is obviously a lot more current than the Biblical examples that we've been talking about, the personal importance of the Sabbath day to Americans has dropped by 24 percentage points. I wondered, what would you say to what do you attribute this drop? And why is it important that we kind of self-examine, in order to look at our personal testimonies of the Sabbath day and why we we observe that law and live that covenant?

Gaye Strathearn

Okay, so I think that these numbers reinforce what many people have known for a long time, right? That the sacrality of the modern Sabbath is increasingly being marginalized and secularized in favor of work, sports, shopping, and leisure activities. For many people and businesses, Sunday is no longer considered sacred time. And I think for all of us, and this has been true throughout time, not just for us, right? But the pull of the secular world is strong. And unless people are intentional about maintaining that sacredness, it becomes lost in the pressures of modern day living. In many ways, we are reliving the struggle that I think the Jews were experiencing in that late second temple period, when they're saying how do we keep this relevant when our world is different from what it had been before? So I sometimes think about this in terms of, I don't know if I'm going to express it well or not. But I sometimes think about this in terms of the metaphor of gravity. As we all know, gravity's pull is constantly at work, whether we're conscious of it or not. And if we do nothing, it will pull us in. It takes intentional exertion of force to overcome gravity's pull. So likewise, I think the pull of the world is always at work in our lives. And whether we're conscious of it or not, and unless we exert an intentional force to counteract its effects, meaning being intentional about valuing and maintaining sacred time, it can easily overwhelm us, and I think that that's what the poll numbers are showing us about the Sabbath day. So another very quick story, when I was a young adult, I remember that Elder David B. Haight came to our stake conference. And I only remember one thing that he said at that conference, but it's caused me to reflect quite a bit on this topic. He said, talking about the Sabbath. "It used to be known as the holy Sabbath day, then it became the Sabbath day, then it was Sunday, and now it's just a sports day" and I just started thinking about that. And what does that mean in my life? Is that true of me? And if I'm honest, there's a part of me that says yes. And unless I'm intentional in changing that, then that pull is just going to move me, if I do nothing, I'll get pulled away from that concept of sacred time. So when President Nelson is inviting us to stay on the covenant path, he talks a lot about sacred space, the importance of the temple, and working there to help keep us firmly rooted on the covenant path. But he's also talked, as we all know, about sacred time, meaning the Sabbath, and not letting that become diluted or moved away. Because the Sabbath is a time when we get to focus on God, not just focus on I think that it is a day of rest and interpret that in terms of leisure activities, sport or recreation and those kinds of things.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, I love that. Because I do think a huge part of it is just being conscious of it. And on Sundays, you know, are we thinking about why we're doing the things that we're doing, and and giving that time to God? You mentioned that President Nelson has talked about sacred space, and in the not so distant past, the Church really stressed and placed this specific focus on "His Day," and giving time to God on that day of the week. Why do you think that this is something that church leaders are focused on and making a point to stress amongst us as members of the Church? I will note, you point out that the Deseret News poll did show that Church members seem more likely to observe the Sabbath. But obviously, there's still a reason that we can we can do better.

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah, we can. Well, I think that this is all part of President Nelson asking us to do things in a higher and holier way. And so the Sabbath day, I think, at various times, all generations have got caught up with as you mentioned, the thou shalt not's. On the Sabbath, you don't do this, you don't do this, you don't do this. One of the things that I hope that readers take away from this volume is not just the thou shalt nots, but what should we be doing in the Sabbath? What are the positive activities, not just focusing on the negative things. And I love President Nelson, again, has talked about quoting Isaiah, and talking about the Sabbath day being a joy to us, right. And I think that's really something for us to focus on. Again, when I was in Israel, one of the things that I loved to do was to take the students on Friday night down to the Western Wall, and see how the people there celebrated the coming of the Sabbath. And there was dancing and singing. And it was just a joyful noise and the students loved. They were welcomed in to sing and dance with everybody. And without fail after we'd go and experience that I'd have someone go, Whoa, I've never thought about the Sabbath this way. Right? That it's something that we look forward to, and we celebrate, and it is joyful to us. And I think there could be something in us as Latter-day Saints and as President Nelson encouraged us to see the joy that comes as we take time to spend and focus time on God and our relationship with Him, this vertical relationship that is so important to us. I've thought about this a few times. But thinking about it, the passage in Psalms, I think it's 46 and Doctrine and Covenants 101, that talks about, Be still and know that I am God. And the Sabbath is an opportunity to walk away from the hustle and bustle of the world if we allow it so that we have some time where it's maybe quiet enough that that we can hear the promptings of the still small voice in our lives. And sometimes that happens on the Sabbath, but also sometimes that happens in preparation for the Sabbath. Sometimes the the time of preparing a talk or a lesson to do on the Sabbath, they have been some of the richest experiences in my life, because I turn off the radio, I turn off the TV, I just sit there with prayer. In my heart, I have the scriptures, I'm thinking about the things of eternity. And in those times, that's when God speaks to me personally, that's when I feel His spirit. That's what I feel connected to Him. And I wouldn't give that up for the world except that, like gravity, that pull of the world is constantly at me, I've got to be intentional in taking times to be still to notice and experience God. But there's the other side of that is also is because my mother used to say that no way is the Sabbath day of day of rest, right? It's the busiest day of the week. And in a small branch, that's often the case. I've thought about this also with another experience I had that has really just reverberated in my soul. So a number of years ago, I was called to be a stake young women's president. And that just came out of left field for me. And I remember my first Sunday when that happened. I left home I think at 8am and I didn't get home until about 9:30 that night, there was ward conferences, there was more than one church attendance, there was going to a ward Young Women's presidency meeting. And then there was a fireside at that night that it was a last minute when you teach a class kind of thing, right. And so I was on the go all day, and I came home, and I was exhausted. But it was a good feeling of exhaustion. But I just decided it was nighttime. And I decided to take my dog for a walk. And we were just walking in the dark. And all of a sudden, this feeling enveloped my entire being. And I felt the love of God. And it caused me to express out loud, "I love this gospel, I love being a part of it. I love being even in this small way, being invited to be an instrument in His hands." And I, I spoke this out, like who's hearing me, it's my dog, he didn't care. But really, it was my pouring out of gratitude to God because on that day, I wasn't still in the sense of doing nothing. But I was still seeking still in terms of seeking the rest of God, the opportunity to have this connection with Him. And those things don't happen to me every Sunday, not even close. But there are times when they do happen. They just reverberate in my soul. And I think that that's what God wants and hopes that we will experience on the Sabbath day both as as individuals, as family, and collectively as a cube community that we're open, and still enough to hear what He wants to say to us.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I love that so much it reminds me of the hymn, "Take Time to Be Holy." And I think just recognizing that there are things that we stand to gain from this. It's not just a checklist or you know, a stringent list of things that we can or can't do. But there are blessings to be had. You quote Jonathan Edwards in the book who said, "The Sabbath day is an accepted time, a day of salvation, a time wherein God especially loves to be sought and loves to be found." And in the interest of time, I'm going to go on to the next question. But I wanted to make sure that I touched on that quote, because I loved it so much. Gaye, this is a book of essays and you kind of have crowd-sourced from your fellow academics, these these essays all about the Sabbath day, and they have different focuses and, and bring out different points. But I wondered what were your biggest takeaways from the essays of others in this book?

Gaye Strathearn

Yeah. Well, I think collectively, they remind us that every generation must engage the Sabbath day in their time and their circumstances. It's not enough to passively rely on how other people understood the Sabbath and applied it. It's something that in every generation, we need to think about it and deal with it and there are some issues that keep reappearing, even though they're clothed in different styles, but regardless of the time that we have, we all have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. So the question throughout all of these essays is to invite us to think about the how are we going to use that time, not just for the blessing of time as we know it here in mortality, but so much more importantly, how are we going to use that time for our spiritual progress and the blessing of eternity? And everybody has had to deal with it. And they've all dealt with it in slightly different ways. But I think that there's much to learn from seeing their experiences, so I talked about the praising God so in my chapter, and I was thinking about this, and I was asking that question, What did Jews in that late second temple period do positively on the Sabbath. And so we get some sense of it was a time to meet together it was important to strengthen those communal bonds. It was a time to read the scriptures. But it was the time to pray and sing praises to God, and be grateful for all that He has done for us. And I thought, Gaye, is that what you do on Sunday when you sing? This is a time for you to praise God in what you do. And so I've been a little bit more intentional about I'm not a great singer, right. But being intentional about the enthusiasm for how I sing, I think it's important too about thinking about the joy, that it is to be able to participate and partake of the sacrament each Sunday. During COVID, as a single person, I didn't have access to the sacrament for a long time. And while, if I'm honest, there was a part thinking, Oh, it's nice to have this day off. But what I missed was to be able to partake the sacrament and when we were able to go back and meet together and partake of the sacrament, I have reminded me what a joyous opportunity and privilege that is. And to be able to renew that covenant, not just individually, although it says but to do it communally, was really, really important to me coming out of that, and I think seeing how others in in other times have kind of really thought through and wrestled with this has just blessed my life in so many ways. And and I hope that it will be helpful to the readers that they might have the Spirit prompt them in ways that they can do some things to help them and families recognize what a joy the Sabbath could be if we just allow it to be that way.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I completely agree. You mentioned kind of your circumstance during COVID. And I think that that's a great example. I wondered there's a quote in the book by an I'm probably gonna butcher this name Judith Shulevitz and she said, the inventors of the Sabbath rules understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. The Sabbath rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will. One that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction. Only a Sabbath that you have to work for will appear worth keeping. And then you write the Sabbath commandment has always compelled people in every dispensation to actively find ways to understand it and live it within their own circumstance. So before we get to our last question, gay, I just wondered, what does the Sabbath look like for you, and how do you live it within your circumstance? And how has that blessed your life?

Gaye Strathearn

So I initially mentioned that I grew up in a small branch of the Church and as a teenager, I was fairly rigid about Sabbath day attendance but when I was younger, my experience was a little bit different. I I quite enjoyed going to Sunday School. That was a positive experience, but going back at the end of the day, for sacrament was less enticing to me. And frankly, I was a bit of a ratbag as a kid, and it wasn't easy for my mom and grandmother too because I wasn't sitting quietly or reverently during that sacrament meeting. And so, there were many times that mom thought, gosh, okay, okay, stay with your father, and that she got to enjoy sacrament meeting. But when I was 11, I was in Merry Miss that is also dating me. And one of the things that we did is that we had a banner and when we did certain things, like, memorize the articles of faith, we'd get a little kind of emblem that we could stick on this banner. And I guess in some ways, I'm a very...I like to see immediate rewards. And so I went through that. And then one of the the assignments was to attend sacrament meeting 12 times. And I wanted to get that quickly. And so I figured that the best way for me to do that was to go 12 weeks in a row, which I did. And something happened to me at that point, because I've been going to sacrament meeting every Sunday since that, it's never now about trying to find a reason not to go. It's always about finding your reasons why I should be there and what I'm going to gain from that. So central then to my understanding service is the opportunity to be at church and to be taught by others and to be inspired by others because I need that, again, living by by myself, I need to feel the Spirit. And I know that it's my responsibility, that ultimately. But there are times when I just need to feel the spirit from hearing others teach me the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so Church is my world on the Sabbath. And then the other things I think we've already talked about, but that opportunity to come home and be still and take time to be intentional about focusing on God has also been just marvelous for me, helpful for me.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well Gaye, this has been wonderful. And I I've learned so much again, I'm not surprised. But my last question for you is what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Gaye Strathearn

Well, it certainly doesn't mean that I don't have questions or that I haven't wondered at times whether there is place for me in the Church, I certainly have had questions and struggled with it. But what I think it means is that I have committed myself to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I love Mormon's declaration in 3 Nephi 5:13, "Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I have been called off him to declare His word amongst his people that they might have everlasting life." Now, my sphere of influence is nothing like Mormon's. But I have drawn my personal line in the sand that this is where I stand. I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with our prophet, and apostles, with our other leaders, not just in good times, but all times and in all places and in all things. So when I think about my covenant, this was me using my agency to choose not just to commit myself when everything is rosy, but to bind myself to God and choose to stay on that covenant path. Even when life is difficult, even when the pull of the world is strong and wanting me to go into a different direction. I know that I'm not perfect, but I hope that that there will come a time when God will have confidence enough in me that if He needs me, I'll step up to the plate and confidently and immediately say, Here am I whatever that looks like. That's what I want to do, because one day I hope that He will encircle me In the arms of his love, and He'll look me in the eye, call me by name and declare to me, Well done, good and faithful servant. I'm not there yet. Not even close. But I hope one day that's where this journey will take me.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, I'll tell you Gaye last week, I was listening to a different podcast interview that you did. And I got off, I finished listening to it. And I told my husband, that you are somebody that I would like to be more like and so you may not feel like you're close, but I would like to be more like you. So thank you so much for sharing your your beautiful testimony with us and also your scholarship. You are a wealth of information and a blessing to the Church. And I am I'm very grateful.

Gaye Strathearn

Thank you, Morgan. Thank you.

Morgan Jones Pearson

A huge thank you to Gaye Strathearn for joining us on this week's episode. You can find "Sacred Time" in Deseret Bookstores now or online at deseretbook.com. A big thank you to Derek Campbell of Mix at Six Studios for his help with this episode. And thank you for listening. I hope you have a wonderful week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai