Today (May 29, 2015), on our fifty-sixth anniversary, I was contemplating what would be a key factor in our marital longevity, and one word came to mind: Sabbath.

Each of us has attended SDB churches since conception. We were brought together at our Makapwa Mission in Malawi, as nurse-midwife and doctor, in its only medical outreach in the world.

The Sabbath has also had a big part, I think, in keeping us together in all the years since then: Each place we’ve lived—except Phoenix—has had an SDB church, and our involvement in them with our children in Sabbath worship, has given us a stability morally and emotionally -- or at least helped us through the “tough” times. Not that the Sabbath in any way keeps us together now – that’s fixed in the Rock, so to speak – but the Sabbath, as it is so important as a part of our life as we share in the Berlin SDB church family, adds a sort of final Crown of Joy to our lives. And all that, for the Grace of God.

Beth and Victor Burdick