I
want to tell you all about something my family and I have been doing.
Because Sundays are all about getting ready for church, then we come
home to eat Lunch, cook dinner early to get ready for the week ahead;
we don't get much rest on that day. We do get an over whelming sense
of peace from God that I find comes from being gathered in his name.
I don't think I can get through my week as well without it. We don't
get much down time though. I mean family movies, outdoor fun, or
simply a day you can actually take a nap. I was thinking about it for
a long time and praying to God that I could use a day to take a
break. I home school and so my schedule is pretty packed with
housework, school work, and laundry. I started reading scriptures
about the Sabbath. Many Christians know that the true Sabbath is on
Saturday. Just do a search on Google and you'll see the facts on that
subject. That's what I did. and I said you know If I followed this
biblical Law with a gentile Christian twist I could be able to get
the real rest I need and Honor God at the same time. So I talked to
my husband and he agreed. I had to make some changes in my schedule
and the first one was to change Saturday cleaning house blessing day
to Fridays. Fridays was a light school day anyway because all
unfinished work was done on that day. Sabbath starts on Friday at
sundown so I would have to have dinner done by 5 pm if I wanted
to be able to do the beginning Sabbath worship. In the Jewish faith
the wife begins the Sabbath with lighting the Sabbath candles and
prayer. So I would light three candles representing the trinity just
before dark about 6 pm. I would have worship songs and scriptures
picked out and anointing oil to bless all my children and pray for my
husband. Saturday Morning I sleep in and that is great!!! We do light
cleaning on Saturday like bed making and breakfast, lunch and dinner
dishes but most of the day is leisure time. Saturday just before
Sundown marks the end of the Sabbath it is called "Havdalah"
and my husband handles that worship time by entering with worship
music and having a family Holy communion, passing around a bowl of
spices to remind us that life is full of spice. In other words life
is full of variety and to much of any one thing is boring and
unhealthy. He also blesses the children and prays for me. Then he
recites scriptures and Thanks Jesus for the light of the world. It
took a couple of weeks to get it just right. Change is never easy,
But God blessed our efforts. What we noticed was just a few weeks
after we started to do this blessings started rolling in. We moved to
a new home and many of our friends blessed us with gifts for our new
home. Many unexpected things kept happening. Last night was the first
time I got everything perfect. I got up at seven and the cleaning was
all done by Lunch. The kids finished their unfinished school work by
1:30 pm and I started dinner and it was done by 4:30 pm. We all gave
thanks and ate together as a family including my husband, who usually
watches the news during dinner and I eat with the Kids. After dinner
I lit the candles and turned down the lights put on the worship and
began to pray. After the worship was over I put on a family
inspirational movie which I try to do every Friday night. So far we
have seen "The Blind side," Gifted hands," "Soul
Surfer," "Field of dreams," "Hoosiers," and
"The Impossible." These movies help us have open
discussions about real family issues, faith,Justice, servitude,
humanity, and a bunch of other subjects. I have fallen in love with
this new tradition in our home and wanted to share it with you. If
you would like to try this with your family here is a Good sight to
learn more about Sabbath or Shabbat.
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Holidays/Shabbat/shabbat.html
