Sabbath

On the day of Super Bowl LVII, Coach Andy Reid helped bless assistant coach Porter Ellett’s new baby. The men are grateful to support each other spiritually.

“Think anyone will notice?” my husband mused, wearing Chacos as we strode together into the church building.

There’s something particularly perfect about a post-church nap. But what are you up to after your Sunday snooze?

One of the difficulties that people have recurringly struggled with throughout the centuries is the question of how to interpret the Sabbath command for their particular time and circumstances.

In our modern world, we are left to navigate how we observe the Sabbath without it becoming a list of what to do and what not to do.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we’ve all heard different ideas about how to spend our Sundays. So what has the Church actually said about keeping the Sabbath day holy?

if you’re feeling a bit down about the weekend slipping away, here are some ideas to help you beat those Sabbath blues and make the day more of a delight.

Fill your home with uplifting music the whole family will enjoy! You're likely to recognize a few favorite artists and we hope you'll enjoy some new ones as well.

Jennie Taylor has known plenty of heartache in her life. As a 10-year-old, she lost her father to suicide. Years later, when she was married with four children, her teenage brother-in-law also committed suicide. And during her husband Brent’s fourth deployment as a soldier in 2018, she found out he’d been killed in action.

Elder Ulisses Soares has experienced atypical Sabbath days as he has waited in the airport while on Church assignments. On one of those Sundays, he found a place where he could be somewhat alone and “closed his eyes and turned his heart to the Lord.”

With church gatherings being suspended until further notice due to the spread of COVID-19, members around the world worshipped from home on Sunday, March 15.

The following article originally ran on LDS Living in September 2015.

When Queen Elizabeth visited the island nation of Tonga, there was an honest desire to keep the Sabbath day holy and free from commercialism, and no boats or planes were allowed to arrive or depart on Sunday.

After years of watching his sons on high-level soccer teams compete in tournaments on Friday and Saturday and then sit out the championship game on Sunday, Travis Breinholt said he felt strongly that something needed to be done.

We recently sat down as a family to talk about how we want to honor the Lord’s day. We began the conversation by talking about Christmas. It is one of our favorite holidays. We begin preparing for it months in advance. We talked about the food that we love to eat, the traditions we participate in, and the reasons why we look forward to the gathering. We made a list of our traditions: new pajamas, ebelskivers for breakfast, fun games, and quiet moments gathered around burning candles when we remember the times we have seen the hand of the Lord in our lives. Those are just a few. It became clear that the reason we love Christmas isn’t because it is December 25; it is because we have set apart that day as a celebration focused on Christ with good food, fun, and time spent talking about what is important. Then I asked if we might be able to set apart the Sabbath as a holy celebration similar to Christmas. If the day were filled with family, good food, and fun and conversations centered on Christ, would it become a day we looked forward to, similar to the way we look forward to December 25? We decided to give it a try. We started establishing traditions that would intentionally set that day apart from every other day of the week. I call these our sweet Sabbath moments. In our home it is a family-only day. We spend time together playing games or making cookies. Grace loves to make and decorate sugar cookies; I like to make meringues. We trade off. For one hour each Sunday we gather in the family room with a journal and spend time talking about what matters most. This is a time for reading the scriptures, studying doctrines and principles, goal setting and family planning—a weekly time to center our life again, with God’s purposes in mind. The evenings are for large family gathering. Married kids, aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandma and grandpa usually gather to eat dinner and share stories and laugh. With deliberate planning, Sundays have become my most favorite day of the week.

The following article previously ran on LDS Living in September 2016.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, in his April 2019 general conference address, warned members against complacency in their Sunday worship:

The dilemma of keeping the Sabbath day holy was a complicated issue for the young surgeon. How does a busy doctor handle the Sabbath? “This was not a theoretical question for a doctor,” Dr. Nelson explained. “We were dedicated to healing and saving lives, and I wrestled to know how to handle this.”

Through the regular pattern of sacrament meeting, I feel like I get a chance to symbolically relive the first Easter weekend.

After BYU women's basketball team defeated Auburn to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament, Sister Jean B. Bingham posted on Facebook, "Good for you, BYU women’s basketball team – you’ve won the first NCAA round! We’re cheering you on!"

“[The Sabbath] is not a day for all the things you can’t do. That would be a pathetic way to think of the Sabbath,” Elder Holland shares in a video featured on the Church’s website. Then he gives an analogy to the Star of David that can transform how we think of this sacred day.

Let’s face it—sometimes Sundays aren’t as enjoyable or fulfilling as we’d like them to be. Between the stress of getting the family—and yourself—ready for church, preparing lessons, preparing meals, and keeping the kids occupied all day, our day of rest can be anything but restful. If you’ve been stuck in a rut, try some of these ideas from LDS Living staff and readers to help improve your Sunday experience.

What does your perfect Sunday look like? Tell us what your Sabbath includes, and we will tell you the uplifting movie that best fits your day of worship.

President Russell M. Nelson has said: “I never ask myself, ‘When does the prophet speak as a prophet and when does he not?’ My interest has been, ‘How can I be more like him?’"

A new mormon.org video is showing members what it means to practice what we preach. The video, "This Is Church," is only just over a minute long but has a powerful message about living the gospel.

Let's be honest—Sunday mornings can be rough. Trying to get the whole family out the door on time for church is not an easy task. Here are 13 GIFs that hilariously capture the #SundayMorningProbs you've probably experienced.

Sunday is a day of rest and a day of worship. However, there are some misconceptions that might cause unnecessary stress and anxiety on the Sabbath. In Mosiah 4:7 it reads, “for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength.” Here are seven things that might make us run faster than we have strength and cause stress on the Sabbath.

Why are white shirts and ties an expected standard for Latter-day Saint men?

To watch or not to watch? That is the question.

If you are experiencing a new start time for your ward or just want to make sure your family is on time this year, these tips are words to live by.

Let’s face it—sometimes Sundays aren’t as enjoyable or fulfilling as we’d like them to be. Between the stress of getting the family—and yourself—ready for church, preparing lessons, preparing meals, and keeping the kids occupied for the rest of the day, our day of rest can be anything but restful. If you’ve been stuck in a rut, try some of these ideas to help reinvent your Sunday.

Do you remember when President Uchtdorf told us about the bumper sticker he saw tacked onto the end of a car whose driver seemed to be a "little rough around the edges"?

Conference Talk: "Respect and Reverence" by Margaret S. Lifferth April 2009 general conference.

The weekly sacrament ritual is the focal point in LDS sabbath worship. In it we renew our baptismal covenants with Christ. These covenants include promises to God, to ourselves, and to others. The ritual also has layers of meaning in how it is prepared, blessed, and passed by the Aaronic priesthood holders in the ward.

The loud voices. The constant squirming. The screaming. And the crying. Oh, the crying. Every. Week.

Tanner McKee, an LDS high school quarterback ranked fourth in the nation, risked losing his spot at the Elite 11 camp after deciding to sit out on Sunday because of his beliefs.

My family often traveled during the summer when I was young. And our travels often found us away from home on a Sunday. We always did our best to keep the Sabbath day holy, but the way we did it usually depended on the circumstances. Coming from a family of extremely shy children, we would often attend all three hours only if we were visiting with cousins that we could go to class with, but other times we would simply attend sacrament meeting before returning to our campsite or hotel to do more scripture study and prayers as a family. Sometimes our circumstances required us to be driving on a Sunday, but my dad always made sure we took turns reading in the scriptures, or would have us listen to scriptures or a conference talk instead of the radio.

For more information on this topic read “The Sabbath and the Sacrament,” by L. Tom Perry, Ensign, May 2011, 6.

Many religions hallow the Sabbath, and we can learn much from how others celebrate and reverence this holy day.

After graduating in the top five percent of his business school class at Harvard, no one can argue that Mitt Romney went on to achieve incredible success in the world of business.

Technology can help our lives run smoother and make our days just that much easier. But sometimes, it can make our lives just that much more cluttered. Here are some great tips to help you focus your Sabbath day on what matters most.

Since I was a Beehive, I've received quotes from prophets, lists, and handouts about what we can and can't do on Sunday. While well-intentioned, I'm not sure these lists capture the spirit of what it means to keep the Sabbath day holy.

For those who are the ward choir director, getting volunteers to participate in the choir can often be quite the challenge. Many times ward members don't usually see how they can add value to or benefit from the choir.

A friend once commented that whoever said the Sabbath was a day of rest was not a Mormon. His tongue was firmly in his cheek when he said it, but he was not wide of the mark by very much. We who have the placed the Gospel of Christ at the center of our lives know that completing Sabbath assignments and duties can be labor—work—of the most demanding kind. But when the Lord set apart a day of the week as a day of rest, he seems to have done so with the intent that we should rest from all our weekly labors (D&C 59:10), and from the work that demands our attention on the non-Sabbath days.

King Benjamin taught that we should “teach [our children] to walk in the ways of truth . . . to love one another, and to serve one another” (Mosiah 4:15). Primary is the perfect place for our children to learn gospel truths and to practice loving and serving each other, but it can be hard for children to focus on the gospel when they’re distracted or not ready to learn. The key to making the most of their experience at church is to prepare, prepare, prepare. You can help your children get more out of Primary by preparing them physically, spiritually, and as a family.