Our Family Sabbath

Our school curriculum includes a book titled, Celebrating Biblical Feasts, which walks us through reenacting some of the events practiced by Jewish families during Old Testament times.  The first one this year was Sabbath.  This took place from a Friday evening through Saturday evening.  The kids prepared some special items for our main meal Friday night and then Saturday was spent just enjoying the day while remembering how God instructed us to rest as He had rested after creating the world in six days.  It was very special to me and I hope created some good memories for the kids.

Philip and Braewyn worked hard making the challah bread covering.

Braewyn was all about making the challah bread. So I used Simply Homemade bread mix.  That is as good as scratch for us!

We made two loaves.  Philip didn't like the idea of braided bread.  Guess it sounded too girly so the round loaf was his while Braewyn and I worked on the right loaf.

Braewyn is holding an extra piece of dough which we placed in the bottom of the oven to symbolize our burnt offering, a tradition practiced by Jewish families.  The book said to toss it into the fireplace.  When placed in the bottom of our oven, it just turned black and made our house smell like stink (to quote Juliet!).

Our baked challah bread.

Our dining room table set for our Sabbath meal.

Sabbath meal is supposed to start at sundown.  We waited as long as we could but ate at 7pm with still some summer sun shining in the windows.  The book had scripted parts of the meal including prayers over the bread and wine (grape juice in our house).  Matthew also went around and prayed over each of the children.  It was so sweet.  Funny moment when Rylan was being prayed over and kept trying to push Matthew's hands off his head. One miracle in itself is that the white table cloth survived each child having several refills of grape juice!

"I don't understand all the fancy stuff, but the food was sure good!"

Braewyn's natural centerpiece.  The book recommended bringing part of God's creation inside by using flowers and leaves from your yard.  I think it's beautiful! 

After dinner, I did sweep the room.  Not sure if Jewish families leave the crumbs and dishes to wash the next evening, but with a crawler in the house the sweeping must be done.

This little crawler is quite curious so he wanted in on the action.  

Our Sabbath dinner and restful Saturday was a definite change of pace.  The downside was that mowing the lawn and laundry was left to do on Sunday afternoon.  I almost wanted to call the neighbors and explain why Matthew was mowing the lawn.  Being raised in a Christian family and always recognizing Sunday as our day of rest made all this feel very unnatural.  However, the intention was good and so I am going to continue being intentional with reserving one day to rest.  We'll just push everything up a day.  The weekend following this Sabbath meal,  I made a big Saturday dinner providing enough leftovers for our Sunday lunch.  That Sunday afternoon, we did leave all housework for another day and enjoyed just spending the day at church, napping, and being together as a family.  God's plans always work best and I'm thankful He gave us a model of rest to follow.