The Taste of Sabbath

Canon Press recently released The Taste of Sabbath: How to Delight in God’s Rest by Stuart Bryan. In the introduction to the book, Pastor Bryan reflects on the roots of the book, including an interesting “Filling up the Corners” chat with his congregation:

“Every Sunday our congregation hosts a question and answer session following the service. We affectionately call it “Filling up the Corners” after an incident in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. Bilbo invites his friends and relations to a grand feast in celebration of his “one hundred and eleventieth” birthday.

After the feast (more or less) came the Speech. Most of the company were, however, now in a tolerant mood, at that delightful stage which they called ‘filling up the corners’. They were sipping their favourite drinks, and nibbling at their favourite dainties and their fears were forgotten. They were prepared to listen to anything, and to cheer at every full stop.1

1J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 28.

And so, having feasted on the Word of God in worship, we break out the drinks and dainties (coffee and donuts in our case), sit in a circle, and ask and answer questions about the sermon. After preaching a sermon on the relationship between the Old Testament Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, I asked those who could remember what things looked like when there was a broad cultural consensus restricting work on the Lord’s Day.

One reported that when he was a child, he distinctly remembered how quiet things were on Sunday. Grocery stores alone were open for business, and most of their aisles were roped off with only necessities offered for sale. But by the time he was a teenager, all that had changed. The restrictions were gone and more and more businesses stayed open. The noise grew.

Why the change? Among the various reasons given, the most poignant was the lack of clear teaching in the Church. The Church always leads culture, and in this area, the Church lost its moorings. Thus, the breakdown of consensus in the Church over the relationship between the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day led to the breakdown in our culture at large.”

To finish reading the introduction and good portion of the first chapter please read Excerpts from a Taste of Sabbath
You may also purchase a “hot off the Canon Press” copy of A Taste of Sabbath from our Resource Store.

About the Author: Stuart Bryan and his wife, Paige, have six children. Stuart earned his M.A. in Theological and Historical Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Before coming to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to pastor Trinity Church, Stuart taught for nine years at The Oaks, a classical Christian school. He is a contributor to St. Anne’s Public House and has written articles for the Veritas Press Omnibus curriculum.