First three steps to instituting the Sabbath in your home

Surprisingly, people are reading my blog!  I realized yesterday that I could check my blog stats and I was thrilled to see that it is getting a lot of hits... even from someone in Pakistan :).

I'm thrilled because eventually I would love to help enact a small amount of social change regarding the Sabbath. It has been so cool for us and I want other to experience the same thing.  It would be amazing if some of my kid's friends were observing the Sabbath with their families.  It's been neat to hear Jackson talk about getting ready for the Sabbath and already starting to enjoy these family days together where we thank God for a day of rest.

Since it's not all that commonplace within the Christian community to follow this commandment I thought I'd throw out a few simple steps to get started.  Here goes:

1.)  Pick a day.  For some families it will be consistent every week.  We do sundown to sundown from Friday night to Saturday night.  This is consistent with the Jewish community.  I love sundown to sundown for several reasons.  I enjoy working hard on that Friday and the sense of completion I feel when that sundown time hits.  I enjoy the anticipation I feel on Saturday when the time I can work rolls around again.  Most of all, I enjoy how the Sabbath changes some with the change of the seasons.  A Sabbath that goes from 9 pm until 9 pm the next night in the summer is different from one that goes from 6 pm to 6 pm in the winter.

For some families the Sabbath day will NOT be consistent due to work or other commitments.  In this case it's just important to plan ahead.  It might be Tuesday one week and Saturday the next.  The first person who inspired me to keep the Sabbath (I was a teenager) was a motivational speaker who traveled a lot on the weekends to speak.  His Sabbath day with his family was on Mondays.

2.)  Plan for meals.  This is what you make it.  To start it could be REALLY simple like:

BREAKFAST: pop-tarts
LUNCH: eat out
DINNER: frozen pre-made lasagna

In time you could re-vamp to something like this:
BREAKFAST: make ahead breakfast casserole or something in the crockpot
LUNCH: make ahead chicken salad or egg salad or soup or...
DINNER: make ahead casserole or some sort

For us, eating out (with the three littles) is usually much more exhausting than eating at home so we're sticking with that for now.  When the kids are older we would possibly go out more.

3.)  DON'T WORK!  As much as you might feel the need to fold a load of laundry or vacuum or mow or do repairs or........ just don't do it.  God wants you to rest!!!!!!!



There you go.  That's how you start.  Give it a try one week and see for yourself how cool it is!

1, 2, 3,
Yay, God!!