Sabbath Day or Study Day

Sabbath Day or Study Day
Glenn Holmes, President of the Benoni South Africa Stake, glanced up at his MA degree hanging prominently on his office wall and said earnestly: “My education was hard won, but I made a commitment to my Saviour Jesus Christ, from early on in my studies, never to compromise Sabbath observance.”
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Glenn was serving as a counsellor in the Stake Presidency some years ago, running his own business and had four young children when he decided to return to university to complete his studies.

“I had to manage my time very carefully, the children were young and we have a severely handicapped daughter, and I needed to fill all my roles – family, church, and business,” he said.

On one occasion during his studies, Glenn was required to attend an important lecture. A few weeks before the lecture, the date was changed to a Sunday morning. Dismayed and not wanting to compromise his commitment to Sabbath observance, Glenn knew he would not attend the lecture. He arranged with a fellow student to borrow his lecture notes and would try his best to glean the necessary information.

The following week the lecture he was attending finished unusually early. As Glenn prepared to leave, his lecturer approached him and said he noted that Glenn had not attended the lecture the previous Sunday. 'My heart skipped a beat as I anticipated some sort of negative consequence for not having attended the lecture. So I simply said to the lecturer, ‘No, I didn’t attend. I was at Church with my family.’'

“He looked at me and then told me the very same lecture I had missed was being presented to another group of students across campus and had just started. If I rushed, I could attend it.”

Glenn hurried across campus, reciting to himself Isaiah 58:13-14: “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the Lord hath spoken it.”

“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: T
hen shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the Lord hath spoken it.”