This is the garden in which Caleb and I spent some time on Friday morning.  We have a friend who plays our in-town Grandma role.  She’s fabulous.  I have a video of her little lap dog chasing a rabbit over and over in the yard.  But it may not be as cute to you as it was to us.

We drove as a family to Friends University this evening to walk around.  Such a pretty campus.  We messed with a lot of acorns, then pondered at a tree near our parked car.  I’d never seen pods like it, so we took one home to cut up.  I also will spare you our hypothesis/test results video.

Good Sabbath.  We broke what I can only assume are some Sabbath rules: We ate out with friends and grocery shopped.  But I don’t regret it!

We rested with our church family at Camp Hiawatha yesterday afternoon and chilled at home in the evening.  The boys played with neighbor friends today, including Pick-Up Sticks.  Do you remember??

Sometimes I feel like this month’s blog posts are scenes from Mayberry.  Oh well.  I’d love to live in Mayberry.  Andy Griffith’s parenting speeches still make me cry.

Just a little info I found in researching things:

“In modern America, we take the five-day work week so much for granted that we forget what a radical concept a day of rest was in ancient times.  The weekly day of rest has no parallel in any other ancient civilization.  In ancient times, leisure was for the wealthy and the ruling classes only, never for the serving or laboring classes.  In addition, the very idea of rest each week was unimaginalbe.  The Greeks thought Jews were lazy because [they] insisted on having a ‘holiday’ every seventh day.”

(www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm)

The word holiday comes from “Holy Day.”

And the Sabbath is the first thing in the Word to be declared as holy.

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

Genesis 2:2&3

Holy means sacred.  Set apart.  Consecrated for divine use.

If Creator God rested from creating and blessed and set apart the 7th day, it seems we would do well to follow suit.

When God makes Observing the Sabbath as the fourth of the Ten Commandments, He says:

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.  On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath Day.”

Deuteronomy 5:13-15

I think it’s interesting that God reminds them of all the miracles with which He led them out of captivity in this context.

Basically:

If I can be trusted to take care of getting you away from a tyrannical Pharaoh with miracle upon miracle…I think I can take care of your basic needs if you trust Me enough each week to rest.

But the resistance to this Command is also linked with pride, isn’t it?

Maybe the whole world doesn’t revolve around me or hinge on my performance, but my little world does!

That lie can be pretty convincing.  The Sabbath reminds us to lay it all down.  Over and over each week.  It’s about Him. He is Jehovah-Jireh, YHWH Will Provide (Genesis 22:14).  We do our part 6 days a week, but the 7th we open our hands.  Obey and trust the results to Him.

And this is for us.  For our good and the good of our families and communities.  It is one of many commands we can delightfully obey, trusting our Father’s heart toward us.

He is worthy of our rest.

We’ve been having a full week.  It is Parent Teacher Conference time.  Which means kids get out at 1:30 and all the moms swap watching each others’ children while we do conferences and book fair.

I really do like it.  We’ve hit the park a couple of times, done lots of nerf gun wars, and been suuuper excited about new books (yay!).

But without nap time/down time, I have to admit, I’m starting to question my identity.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic.

But I do do better when I have some time during the day to think and read and ponder and muse.

God is intensely challenging our faith right now in trusting His financial provision.  Put another way, I think we have a new theme song:

Three things:

1.  That was also a bit dramatic

2.  Can we take a minute and celebrate that I figured out how to put a video in the middle of a blog post?

3.  We talked about having this song be the one to which we walked out of our wedding.  We decided against it.

I know it is very, very easy for Him to take care of us.  But it is not always very, very easy to trust.

Pray for us?  We are grateful.

Moving on…

Caden reading a book to Caleb’s preschool class.  He did so well.

One man, one boy, and one ninja making an “animal house.”  We don’t have any animals, so I’m not sure what it will be used for.  But they do love building stuff with Dad.

The sacred pauses are going well around here.  I love when Caden hears the phone alarm go off and he says, “Oh, Twilight Hour already?” or whatever time it is.  I don’t think I’ll be changing the alarms after this month.  What a beautiful discipline to incorporate all the time.

Hope you’re having a good week!

I got to sit down and talk with a friend from one of my classes this morning.

Mark’s parents were both raised in Jewish homes.  When they made their own family, in his words, they “rebelled from a strict orthodox upbringing.”  So he himself was raised in a much less devout manner.

However, growing up his family would often visit his grandmother who followed the traditions.  It is here he would most often partake of the Sabbath Meal.

Early Friday (the Day of Preparation) his Grandma would put a chicken on the stove and cook it slowly all day.  She would stir and taste and add ingredients “accordingly.”  He mentioned his mother would get frustrated when Grandma used that phrase, because she wanted measurements and all she got was accordingly.

Grandma would also make sure and follow Kosher standards: never mix meat and milk in with your dishes.  Mark says this has to do with the older wooden bowls women would prepare food in; the bacteria would get in the cracks and spoil the food.

In addition, she would make sure to never use pork products since it is considered unclean.  There is also a practical reason for this rule: Back in the day, without proper refrigeration, people would often suffer from trichinosis.  (For the record, I had to look up several words he used in our conversation!)

Grandma would also make the traditional challah (pronounced hallah with an ‘h’ that sounds like you’re going to hawk a loogie.)  

This sweet-tasting braided bread was usually made by hand on the Day of Preparation (although Mark’s daughters usually buy it at a bakery these days).  The two parts of the braid represent the double portion of manna that God rained down from heaven for the Israelites in the wilderness.  I love that the Sabbath is so intertwined with how God provides for His people.  They wouldn’t have to gather manna on the day of rest, and the double portion gathered the day before was the only extra portion that would not spoil (Exodus 16:21-26).

Grandma would also make tzimes (pronounced ‘simmis’), a traditional dish that is a mixture of carrots and sweet potatoes.

The whole mood traditionally surrounding the Sabbath meal is one of anticipation.  Often the family dresses up, good china is used, and members treat it as if they are preparing for the arrival of a beloved guest.

An important element in all this is the lighting of candles.  He didn’t go into detail on the “why” behind this, so I looked it up.  These candles represent the two commandments surrounding Shabbat: zakhor (to remember – Exodus 20:8) and shamor (to observe – Deuteronomy 5:12).

The woman of the house lights these candles before the partaking of the challah.  Mark said Grandma would observe the tradition of placing her hands in front of her face as she said the prayer.  (And he mentioned his oldest daughter sings the prayer.)

He repeated the prayer to me in Hebrew, but I looked up the transliteration online:

Blessed are you, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the light of the Holy Shabbat.

After reciting the blessing and uttering her silent prayer, the woman uncovers her eyes and traditionally says … “Shabbat Shalom,” to all who are present.  Source

Source

Shabbat Shalom.

Peace/Greetings/Welcome Sabbath!

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We discussed many more things than the traditional meal.  I want to share some with you, but that’s for another post.  However I can’t resist including something incredibly charming he mentioned about his grandmother and the Sabbath:

Grandma and several of her widow friends were excellent poker players.  They played every night, except on the Sabbath.  Mark said one time they invited a distant relative who wasn’t sure it was fair if he participated because of his Advanced Math degree.  He said, here were all these ladies with no more than a 5th grade education and old world accents taking on the Mathematician.  He said they may not have understood formal statistics, but they knew the odds of probability.  Mr. Advanced Math came to the game with $45 and went home with none!

Don’t you love it?