The Sabbath Meal

We're attempting to implement our vision a phase at a time.

This week we are celebrating our first Sabbath.

For the Jews Sabbath begins when the sunsets on Friday and concludes at sundown Saturday. The first church seemed to switch everything forward 24 hours so we started at sundown Saturday.

The first step was to find a Sabbath candle for each member of the family. I hit Yankee Candle and smelled virtually every candle in the store to settle on a Shabbat scent. Once I found one I got the three wicker for myself, a tall pillar for April and a big, medium, and small jar candle for each of the kids.

On my way out of JC Penny I saw these amazing dishes on sale. They were "Tuscan" style all hand-painted with grapes and other fruit. So I bought those along with some matching goblets and hit Kroger to get the meal complete with sparkling grape juice and matzo.

After we got the house prepared the kids were buzzing around asking questions about every detail. Why do we light candles? Is this grape juice Jesus' blood? The theological conversations were getting deep even before we got to the table.

Each of us lit our candles and we said the Hebraic blessing for lighting the Shabbat candles, as well as the blessing over the washing of hands, over the wine (sparkling grape juice in our case), son, daughter, and the meal. Then we took communion together and began to eat.

The kids immediately began asking all kinds of questions about Christianity. It was like the atmosphere of Shabbat was spiritually charged and lifting their thoughts toward God-centered things. This is going to be a great touch stone of their theological education.

After the meal I cleaned up while April read parts of the Torah portion and the Gospel and Epistle portion from the Messianic Shabbat calendar, while the kids colored pages of the story.

We took our candles into the family room where we had family worship and prayed over our move to Ft. Thomas (except both kids wanted to pray and thank God for the Sabbath).

They started making up songs and poems on their own. We then took their candles up to their room and put them to bed.

It was a great first meal and I'm really looking forward to having tomorrow as a day for prayer and reflection. It feels like the structure of the Sabbath has a soothing effect on the soul. I've heard from those who celebrate the Sabbath that it also has a profound effect on your whole week making you more productive through both being rejuvenated and knowing that your day of rest and reflection is coming.

Jesus said that the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath. This verse was what got me thinking about celebrating the Sabbath. If God created Sabbath for us He must have known that it was something we needed. Of course we should never celebrate the Sabbath in the Pharisaic tradition - ridged unbiblical rules and forcing them on others, but it seems in the church we've tried so hard to avoid doing that that we've decided to forgo the event all together.

We're looking forward to having friends come over and enjoy the Sabbath meal with us in weeks to come.