Sabbath
Sabbath is a gift from God, a gift of rest and a gift of connection. Sabbath provides rhythm to our week and serves as a reminder that we’re not alone in the toil of this life. We’re in it with God and with our family. Sabbath is a discipline – we have found it very difficult to keep our Sabbath sacred, with the demands of work and other relationships. But our lives feel more manageable when we celebrate the Sabbath.
Read It
Exodus 20:8-11
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
- NRSV
Exodus 20:8-11
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
- NRSV
Do It
Choose a day (or start with an evening, if you need to) for your family’s Sabbath. Traditionally, this is Sunday for Christians (sun-down Friday to sun-down Saturday for Jews), but it’s okay for your family’s Sabbath to be a different day. As pastors, Sunday is a huge work day, so we have chosen 5:00 Thursday to noon Friday for our family Sabbath. Let your Sabbath be a sacred time of connecting with each other and with God. Below are some ideas of ways to celebrate the Sabbath - choose some of these or come up with your own. Don’t try to do too much, take it in small bites! The important thing is that you develop a routine, a predictable way that you celebrate the Sabbath so it can be a time of “coming home” for you and your children.
Ideas:
Sabbath Meal Simple but special menu (requiring minimal prep and clean-up for the parents)
Sabbath Activity
Learn and repeat Bible verses (link for list of good Sabbath verses)
Do a learning activity together (a good opportunity to use the ones from this website).
Worship Time
If Sunday morning is part of your Sabbath, talk about worshipping with your church family as part of Sabbath
Sing a few songs together
Choose a day (or start with an evening, if you need to) for your family’s Sabbath. Traditionally, this is Sunday for Christians (sun-down Friday to sun-down Saturday for Jews), but it’s okay for your family’s Sabbath to be a different day. As pastors, Sunday is a huge work day, so we have chosen 5:00 Thursday to noon Friday for our family Sabbath. Let your Sabbath be a sacred time of connecting with each other and with God. Below are some ideas of ways to celebrate the Sabbath - choose some of these or come up with your own. Don’t try to do too much, take it in small bites! The important thing is that you develop a routine, a predictable way that you celebrate the Sabbath so it can be a time of “coming home” for you and your children.
Ideas:
Sabbath Meal Simple but special menu (requiring minimal prep and clean-up for the parents)
- Consider doing a Sabbath shopping trip, taking your child(ren) to a deli and letting them pick out some special foods for the meal
- If you want to really go easy, order pizza!
- And if you want to go traditional, buy or make challah, drink grape juice, and round it out with some cheese and fruit
- Use china and cloth napkins
- Get special Sabbath plates – they don’t have to be fancy, just something that only gets brought out for Sabbath.
- Candles (possibly one for each family member)
- Christ candle
- A bowl that always contains something seasonal from outside (flowers, a branch, produce, a bowl of snow)
- “God of rest, we thank you for this gift of Sabbath. You are worthy of our praise, and we seek your presence with us in our Sabbath celebration. Grant us rest, grant us peace. Bless our food and our time together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
- “Oh gracious light, pure brightest of the ever-living Father in Heaven, oh Jesus Christ, holy and blessed. Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing thy praises, oh God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, oh Son of God, oh Giver of Life, and to be glorified through all the earth.”
- With young children, this often turns into parents doing a lot of the talking. That’s okay! And you don’t have to talk about God for the whole meal. This is just an evening to practice awareness of God, and in verbalizing that awareness, you are teaching your child(ren) important practices.
Sabbath Activity
Learn and repeat Bible verses (link for list of good Sabbath verses)
- As you learn them, talk about what they mean. As you move on from one passage to another, keep going back and repeating the other. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your child can build up her/his repertoire of verses!
Do a learning activity together (a good opportunity to use the ones from this website).
Worship Time
If Sunday morning is part of your Sabbath, talk about worshipping with your church family as part of Sabbath
Sing a few songs together
- As the Deer
- Zephaniah 3:17
- Clap de Hands
- Halle, Halle, Halle
