Here at Venn we’re poised to launch a new resource in our Keeping Sacred Time devotionals. Welcoming the Sabbath is a liturgy for households to enter into rest together. The text was originally included in How to Sabbath Well, our book exploring the meaning and practice of Sabbath rest. We’ve created a more usable card version of the liturgy for you to use each week. We asked the flatmates of King George Avenue in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, to trial it together—Ed.
Living in a big flat of young professionals in the middle of central Auckland is a great joy but also, like many households, busy and a little chaotic. Different schedules and a constant stream of new people through the front door leave us longing for moments of collective and individual stillness. When Venn invited us to trial a new resource, Welcoming the Sabbath—A Weekly Liturgy, we were excited by the opportunity to welcome the Sabbath together as a household. For many of us, those seasons when we have deliberately practiced Sabbath have been marked by a deep sense of rest, and a closer relationship with the Lord. However, the distractions of life pull us away and we’re “too busy” to set aside a day a week to rest in the Lord.
Venn’s Liturgy is intended to help households enter Sabbath well, by structuring participation in an intentional meal on the eve of Sabbath. We began our preparations the night before, cooking a meal which could be reheated, and setting the table ahead of time—small but significant ways to help us ease into our time together. We then invited a couple of friends over to share the experience, and together participated in the liturgy under candlelight. The liturgy itself invited us to experience our meal accompanied by spiritual practices, such as meditating on Scripture, transforming an ordinary dinner into a sacred space.
There is something profound about beginning rest with an evening meal. We found ourselves naturally entering into deeper conversations, settling into a gentler pace and becoming more aware of God’s presence with us throughout the rest of the weekend. The end of the liturgy creates a moment to bless the other members of your household. As a group of people who live together by choice (rather than family circumstance), this felt particularly significant as we committed once again to resting in the Lord’s presence together.
In the foreword of Venn’s resource, How to Sabbath Well, Strahan Coleman calls the practice of Sabbath a “counter-culture for the consumerism and achievement addiction of our times”. The practice of communal liturgy, shared over food, was a great way to live this out by intentionally reminding ourselves of who we are and our place in God’s kingdom; we’re excited to incorporate it as a regular rhythm going forward.
—Flatmates of King George Avenue
