A token of His love and a reminder of His care

This children's sermon was delivered by my great-uncle while he was pastor of the Plainfield, NJ, Seventh Day Baptist church in the 1920s. It was published in a collection, When I Was A Boy, in 1928. When Ahva J.C. Bond was a boy, he was growing up on a farm located on Canoe Run, near Roanoke, West Virginia. The "Charley" he refers to was my grandfather, my mother's father.

My Father's Clock

I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them.—Ezekiel 20: 12.

ONE day, when I was a very small boy, before I was old enough to go to school, my father bought a new clock and brought it home and set it on the mantel over the fireplace. The other boys were at school, and my mother said to me, "Now, let us say nothing to the boys about the clock when they come home from school and see if they will notice it or hear it tick."

I remember how excited I was. I was afraid I just couldn't keep from looking, and would give it all away. I managed though! And I remember how Charley came in talking and telling something—just as children always do when they come home from school—when, suddenly he looked up in great surprise, for he had heard the ticking of the clock and saw it right there on the mantel. Then I could tell him all about it, for that was what I had been aching to do.

The tick of that clock became a very familiar sound to me during the next twenty years, before I went away from my boyhood home to make a home of my own. All times of the day, and sometimes in the night, when I would be awake, the tick tock of that clock fell upon my ears and broke the stillness. And as it counted off the hours it would start with a whiz, and then without more ado it would strike off the number in rapid strokes as if to warn us that time was precious and that it was swiftly passing.

A few years ago my father gave me that old clock which carries so many memories of the old home. Now it sits on the mantel in my study and ticks off the minutes just as it used to do "some forty years ago." And when the fire is burning low in the grate and I have put aside my book and all is still in the house, I sometimes listen to the familiar tick of the old clock, and in memory I can live over again the scenes of my childhood. The ticking of the clock takes me back to the old home of my earliest years, with the open wood fire and the tall spinning wheel and with the family circled about the hearth. I recall the tender love of my mother and the kind protecting care of my father, as that old clock ticks away on the mantel. And I can see my father as he used to get up from his chair at the right of the fireplace to wind the clock—a notice always that it was time to go to bed. All these things, and many more, come back to me with the ticking of the clock which my father brought home so many years ago when I was a little boy and which a few years ago he gave to me and which now sits on the mantel in my study.

What I have told you about the clock is all true. But to me it is also a parable. It teaches me a lesson of heavenly things, and I hope you can get the lesson also. Our heavenly Father has given to me and to all his children a timepiece which tells us of his love and helps us to think of the heavenly home and of all the peace and joy of our Father's house. I think you know what I mean. I mean the Sabbath day.

A long, long time ago God gave the Sabbath to the world. He set it at the end of the week to mark for us the passage of time. And that it might stand through all time as a token of his love and as a reminder of his care, he blessed and hallowed it. He asks us not to do any work on the Sabbath, but to take time to be still and listen. And as we are quiet on God's holy Sabbath day we can hear him speak to us. We can think of the home over there; but we can think also of this world as the home of our Father, in which we can live happily with him. The Sabbath is the symbol of God's abiding presence. God is in his world. That is what the Sabbath says to us.

Of course we should think of our heavenly Father every day. Many times a day we can think of his goodness. But there is no day that can help us to think of him as the Sabbath can.

It is the clock which my father gave me, the one which I used to see him wind every night when the day was done, that brings my father to mind, and the happy memories of home. It is the day which God placed at the end of the week and which he blessed in a special way, that brings God nearest to us in our thoughts. The Sabbath day reminds us of God's love as no other day can. In the dawn of every Sabbath day God says to his children, "I am still here." Every week as the Sabbath comes around reminding us of our Father's loving care, let us find some time to be quiet and feel his presence and receive his blessing.

I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them.

Rev. Ahva J.C. Bond, When I Was A Boy, American Sabbath Tract Society, Plainfield, NJ, 1928, pp. 55-57.