Isaiah 58:13, “Call the Sabbath a DELIGHT.”

Years ago I read a book of the history of the Jews. In this book, a Jewish man stated that the whole of the week revolved around Shabbat. They would start anticipating it during the middle of the week leading up to it, and then ponder on the joy of it for the next few days until it was time to lead up to it again. When I first read that, I thought it was rather “over the top”! However, now that we celebrate the Shabbat meal ourselves, it has become my own experience.   

I believe the Shabbat meal is the glue that has held Jewish families together for centuries. We would do well to emulate it. Why is it so significant? It is not only a meal where you bring out your best china and silver ware and prepare a special meal, but where blessings fall upon the family. Let me tell you what we do for our Shabbat meal. You can take what you feel would fit into your family. If it does not suit you to do it Friday evening, you could celebrate it on Saturday evening as you lead into your day of worship on Sunday.

I like to use white for Shabbat – white tablecloth, white plates and white candles. In Jewish literature, the Shabbat is described as a bride or queen. We are not only to make the table fit for a queen but to dress for the meal as though we were welcoming a future spouse. (Oops - often I am so busy preparing that I don’t get time to dress up by the time we sit down to the meal!)

LIGHTING THE CANDLES

When we sit down to the table, we all hold hands and my husband prays. I then light the Shabbat candles. It is traditional to have two candles on the table (although you can have more). Some say that one candle stands for “Remember” and the other “Observe” as we are commanded to do both these in the Word of God (Exodus 20:8 and 31:16). Others say that one represents “Creation” and the other “Redemption”.  As I light the candles I thank God that He is the Creator of light, and that He also gave us Jesus, who is the Light of the world and who lights every one who comes into this world. I ask that God will fill us with His light and also the light of the revelation of His Word. This privilege of lighting the candles is given to the woman of the home as she is the one who is responsible to keep the light of God kindling in the heart of her home.

FATHER BLESSES HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN

My husband then reads Proverbs 31 and praises me. We love to invite others to join our Shabbat table and so we ask each husband present to share some lovely things about his wife. This is always such a precious time. Can you imagine being praised by your husband every week? Doesn’t it make you want to have a Shabbat meal right now? Sometimes I will read Psalm 112 (or Psalm 127 or 128) and praise my husband, and if friends are present, the other wives will praise their husbands.

The father of the home then blesses each of his children. This is another wonderful part of the Shabbat meal. It is such a powerful moment when the father blesses and speaks vision and good things into each one of his children every week. It is delightful to see the children with uplifted faces drinking in the blessing and encouragement. They can feed on it all week. Don’t forget the baby and little ones. Start speaking into their lives from an early age. We ask each father present at the table to bless his children. The weekly blessing of wife and children will bring a new dimension of joy and blessing into your home.

HAND WASHING

It is traditional to have Washing of Hands. I pass around a bowl of water with a towel and each one washes their hands. This is symbolic of having clean hands and a pure heart. It has far more to do with the purifying of the soul than cleanliness. We usually sing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” as we do this. This is a good time for apologies and forgiveness if there has been tension or hasty words spoken.

BLESSING THE WINE AND BREAD

Now comes the blessing of the wine and bread. You can use grape juice instead of wine. It is traditional for the father to give the blessing, but we have now got into the habit of all saying the prayer together – “Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, King of the Universe, who bringeth forth the fruit of the vine.” Rocklyn and Monique love to celebrate Shabbat with us each week. Recently Monique called to tell me that she was watching three-year-old Joshua playing with his dinosaur. He had a crumb of bread in his hand and as he gave it to him, he said, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, King of the universe, who bringeth forth bread from the earth.” She was amazed at how he had remembered it, just by hearing it each week.

The father then prays over the hallah, the Shabbat bread, although we usually recite it together – “Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”  Making the hallah is part of my Preparation day. The hallah consists of two separate braided loaves, representing the double portion of manna which God provided on Fridays so the Israelites could gather twice as much – enough for two days. It is plaited in three to represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I cover the hallah with a linen cloth, symbolic of the dew that came down each night and brought the manna. But we remember more than God’s provision of the manna. The Israelites ate this manna and died. We now eat from the Living Bread who came down from Heaven and gives life to the world.  

We do not cut the hallah bread but break it as it symbolizes Christ’s body which was broken for us. Each one present breaks off a portion (as big a piece as they desire), and enjoys it with butter or other dips I have prepared while I bring all the food to the table.

ENJOY THE MEAL

Now it is time to eat. Everyone is hungry and ready to enjoy the food. You can cook whatever you like for the Shabbat meal, but make it a special meal. When Rocklyn and Monique are with us they demand I cook lamb chops! It is traditional to make a slow-cooked stew of meat, potatoes and beans. This saves lots of dishes.

Our Shabbat meal is relaxed and full of wonderful fellowship. We are often still lingering at the table at 10.00 or 11.00 p.m. We end the meal, as we end every meal, with the reading of the Word and each one praying around the table. If you have little children, you will most probably finish much earlier. You can then spend the rest of the evening sharing special family time – reading, playing games or singing. Make it special and always enjoyable – never boring or “religious”.

Love from NANCY CAMPELL

EXTRA NOTES:

PREPARATION DAY

If you are new to the Devotional List, you may like to read last week’s devotion before reading this one. Go to  The Day of Preparation.

LET ME KNOW

I would love to hear how your family is blessed as you try this weekly celebration meal. Tell me how you go. And how are you going with your Preparation day?

PAPER PLATES

Although it is traditional to bring out your best china and silverware for this meal, you may (if you are a busy young mother) prefer to use paper plates. When your children are small, you can do things more simply. As they grow older, and you have more help, you can do it more elaborately.

HOW DO YOU MAKE THE HALLAH BREAD?

I always grind the wheat freshly for each new batch of bread I make. On Preparation day, I grind the wheat, make my usual bread recipe but add a couple of eggs to it. Hallah is meant to be a sweet eggy bread.  After making three or four loaves of bread, I then take the rest of the dough to make the hallah.  

I divide the dough into six equal parts, roll each part into a ball, and then each ball into six long rolls of even thickness. The children will love to help you with this. I then make two separate loaves, each plaited in three. To do this, pinch together the tops of all three pieces. Start to braid by taking the outer right strip and crossing it over the center strip, bringing it to the center. Then take the outer left strip and cross it over the middle strip, bringing it to the center. Repeat the procedure by alternately bringing the right strip to the center and the left to the center until all are braided. Pinch the ends together. Tuck the ends in carefully. Transfer the bread to a tray and bake as usual.

For a change you can make two loaves of two strands braided together. This represents the two sticks of Judah and Ephraim who will one day be joined together and become one in the hand of the Lord. Oh how I love this promise in Ezekiel 37:16-17.

If you don’t bake your own bread, and therefore do not have your own recipe, you could look up this website for some genuine hallah recipes –  http://www.kosherdelight.com/Breads.htm

Mark 15:42, “This all happened on Friday, the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath.”

Did you know that there is actually a day that is called the day of Preparation? Most versions of the Bible translate Preparation with a capital P. It is a significant day. An important day.

The day of Preparation is the day before the Sabbath, the rest day. In the very beginning of time, God established the principle of a day of rest. It is His gift to us. But, as with many of God’s gifts, we often do not realize their importance, or even their blessing. I have to confess, especially being a workaholic, that although I have always known the principle of the day of rest, I have not always been successful in doing it.

How do you have a day of rest? There’s still so much to do. The meals have to be cooked. The house has to be cleaned. This and that has to be done. But God never tells us to do something without giving us a way of doing it. Here it is:

You cannot enjoy a day of rest, unless you have a day of Preparation the day before!

What a liberating principle! I stumbled on it a number of years ago when I started having a Shabbat meal every Friday evening. The word Shabbat is the Hebrew word for Sabbath, which means rest. We do not do the Shabbat meal because we are Jewish, or even because we are trying to be Jewish, although we love the Jewish people and love to celebrate the Feasts of the Lord. We enjoy Shabbat because it is the most beautiful family meal you could ever enjoy. Perhaps I’ll tell you more about it next week. In order to prepare for this meal, I not only clean the house, but do the extra cleaning (such as clean the dirty spots off the carpet, wipe spots of the doors, disinfect the door handles), and prepare the special meal.

However, when I read this verse and saw that it was a Scriptural principle, I now do it with more meaning and more gusto.  It is my day of extra cleaning. I not only prepare the meal for Shabbat, but prepare extra food to last over the weekend and for our rest day.

Dear mother, would you like to try? You will be amazingly blessed. It is your stress reliever, and every mother needs a stress reliever. The day of Preparation will relieve you from stress…

1.    Because you will actually end up having a day of rest. Because you have worked hard the day before, cleaning and cooking, you will be able to rest from these chores on your rest day.

2.    Because at least once a week you will enjoy a sparkling clean home. This will certainly give you a restful feeling.

Now, when I talk about a day of rest, it doesn’t matter whether you make Saturday or Sunday your day of rest. Years ago, the Christians looked upon Sunday as their Sabbath in the same way that Jews look upon Saturday. I myself what brought up this way. We never bought from a shop on Sunday. We cleaned and cooked on Saturday to prepare for Sunday. Sadly, God’s people of today have lost something very special that God has given. They miss out on His gift and reap the consequences – lives filled with stress.

God’s rest day, is a DAY of rest, not just a couple of hours. (Exodus 35:2) Many Christians give God a couple of hours when they go to church, and then off they go to ball games, movies or whatever they want to do.

I also think that it would make an amazing difference in preparing your children to be ready for Sunday if you were to follow the Preparation day, don’t you. I’d love to share with you this quote from the lives of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. It is from Married to a Difficult Man (The uncommon union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards) by Elizabeth D. Dodds.

“Perhaps the most fortunate feature in the development of the children was the sense of privilege they felt, as a minister’s family on the great occasion of Sunday. Puritans toiled hard all week, so they took seriously the admonition to rest on the Sabbath. After sundown on Saturday no one could work at all, except to brush sparks from the hearth. They couldn’t even make beds. So a Puritan housewife shined up her house on Saturday, and did a colossal baking. Then after three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the mood of expectancy began to build up to the pivotal day. These people really believed that Sunday would bring an encounter with a living and dependable God who had brought them to the new land and watched over their effort to build His holy commonwealth.

While a large roast cooked all day, to ensure cold meat for Sunday, a great copper tub before the fire held water which was being warmed for baths. Shoes were shined, clothes laid out for the next day, and “modest pieces” ironed. (These were inserts of lace or velvet that were tucked into the neckline of a Sunday dress.) Father abstracted, would be finishing his two sermons for the next day. Then on Saturday night the family sang a psalm together, had prayers and went upstairs to bed with a sense of anticipating drama, as children now do only on Christmas Eve.” (My emphasis)

Let your children become part of God’s wonderful principles of a day of Preparation and then the day of Rest. Involve them in helping with the cleaning and cooking. Inspire in them an excitement as you prepare for your day of rest.

Next week I’ll tell you about the Shabbat meal that will bring wonderful blessings into your home.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Oh Lord, I thank you that you care about us so much. You want us to live lives of rest and peace and you have shown us the way to do it. Help me to get in line with you and do it your way. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

REQUEST:

As you begin to put the Preparation day into operation in your home, I would love to hear how it works for you.  Would you please email me? Thanks so much. 

Isaiah 29:22-23 TLB, “My people will no longer be ashamed. For when they see the surging birth rate and the expanding economy, then they will fear and rejoice in my name.”

As we traveled and Val and I drank in the beauty of the bare winter trees, we also noticed something very interesting. Every now and then we would see a bird’s nest in a tree, and yet the trees were not full of bird’s nest. We would see one every now and then. And yet there are thousands and thousands of birds. We see birds all the time around our home here in the woods. Obviously there are plenty of trees for birds to choose to build their homes.

I think it is much the same way with people. The secularists and humanists frighten us with notions that the world is being over-populated and we must limit having children. This is a lie. There is plenty of room for people, just as there are plenty of trees for the birds to build their homes. God has created a big world which He created to be inhabited. This is His purpose for the world He created.

If you have driven from Los Angeles to the East side across this great country of USA, you will see that there is plenty of room in this land. You can drive for hours and hours and see no population at all. Suddenly you drive through a big city and out again – once again driving through miles and miles of uninhabited land! And this is not only in USA. I have traveled by bus and by train through Malaysia – driven for miles between cities, seeing a few homes here and there. The cities may be crowded, but the land is not crowded!

Brian Carnell in How Much Food is Available Now? Says, “The world currently produces more than enough food to provide every single man, woman and child alive today with an adequate diet…”

Dr. Jacqueline R. Kasun in Too Many People states, “If you allotted 1250 square feet to each person, all the people in the world would fit into the state of Texas…”

Professor Budziszewski writes, “Fertility is already declining in every region of the world, and population growth has been slowing down since the late 1970s. In the developed countries, the net reproduction rate is 0.7 and dropping, which means that the next generation will be only 70 percent as large as this one. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute suggests that we may one day face not an explosion but an “implosion” of population.”

“China, everyone’s favorite supposed example, has fewer than 60 percent as many people per square mile as the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Obviously, then, China’s problem is not overpopulation, but underdevelopment. Many people think that population growth prevents the economic growth of poor nations, but a number of economists now suggest the opposite: every new person brings not only another mouth to feed, but two hands with which to work. Misguided efforts to help poor countries by suppressing their natural population growth may actually hurt them.”

In Ralph Epperson's book, The Unseen Hand, he states that if you took the population of the world (now nearly 5 million) and split it up into families of four and gave them each a piece of land 50' x 53', the entire population of the planet would fit neatly into the state of Oregon.

We really don’t even need these statistics as God has everything in control all along. Isaiah 45:18 says, “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”

He gave us this earth to “subdue, and take dominion.” As we look to Him, we will give the ingenuity and enablement to house and grow food for all the children God sends.

I think we should believe God rather than the pessimistic secularists, don’t you?

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“I thank you, Lord, that I can completely trust you. You have the whole universe in your command. You have everything in your control. You have created this world to be filled with your people. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

Revelation 4: 11, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

I’m still enjoying this car ride and beholding the beauty of the winter trees. Now that I can see all their branches, I see that they are stretching outwards and upwards - mostly upwards towards their Maker – reaching out in praise to the One who created them.

God created all things for His pleasure – all of His creation, and especially mankind, who is His highest creation. All creation was created to praise Him. Once again, we learn a lesson from the trees. We should always be looking up and stretching out our arms in praise to Him, who alone is worthy.

This afternoon I was at my sister’s home. Beautiful music played softly in the background. Suddenly we recognized the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah. We turned up the volume to the absolute maximum! The anointed music filled the room. We rose, and without thinking about it, automatically raised our arms in praise to the One who is King of kings and Lord and lords and who will reign for ever and ever.

May we be saved from looking downwards and taking our eyes off the Lord. Every branch reaches upwards to the Lord, the Sun of righteousness.  Like the trees, keep looking up. Get into the habit of raising your heart and soul to the Lord. And yes, your arms too. Throw away all your inhibitions. You were born to praise Him. You were born to raise your arms towards Him. You were born to fix your heart and gaze upon Him.

Raise your hands to Him in praise. Raise your arms to Him when you are crying out for His mercy and for answers to your prayers. As I look at the trees now, I see that not only each branch, but each tiny twig is reaching upwards to the Lord. Turn everything in your life to Him – your thoughts, yearnings, cries, hurts, sorrows, and your praise and thanks.

Reach out to the heavens. With upward look and lifted arms your vision will enlarge. You will see things you have never seen before. You will view life from a different vantage point.

Join with David and cry out, “Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.” (Psalm 25:1)

Again in Psalm 63:4, “I will lift up my hands in thy name.”

And for your children, “Lift up your hands to Him for the life of your little ones…” (Lamentations 2:19)

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Thank you, Lord, that I can praise you along with all your creation. Help me to be like the trees that are always turned to you in praise and adoration. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

Further Study:

Nehemiah 8:6; Psalm 28:2; 86:4; 119:48; 121:1-2; 123:1; 134:2; 141:2; 143:8; Isaiah 40:26; Lamentations 3:41; Luke 21:28; 1 Timothy 2:8; Hebrews 12:2