It’s funny how a simple declaration can lift your spirit and brighten your day.
“It smells like Heaven!”
On Shabbat morning I was hard at work, still trying to close out my week.
“What” you say, “You’re working on the Sabbath?!”
Unfortunately, yes. My new boss is trying to prove himself. Anything less than perfection can get you canned. On top of that, my territory shifted and I’ve got a whole new crew of people who weren’t trained correctly…or don’t care…or…
It doesn’t matter the reason, it is the reality I am dealing with for the last few months. So this Friday I decided I was going to make some good food so the grandkids and I would have some semblance of Shabbat – God’s precious gift that lay unwrapped in my home of late.
For the first time in months I made challah and actually planned out our three meals. For dinner I made Chicken Parmesan with Garlic Knots. I swapped our usual Shabbat breakfast of bagels, fruit, and hardboiled eggs for Slow Cooker French Toast. Lunch was my all-time favorite – Cholent.
If you are unfamiliar with Cholent, it is similar to beef stew that cooks for 20 hours. The aroma is amazing. So when my granddaughter came downstairs and exclaimed, “It smells like Heaven”, she hit upon a powerful truth that whisked me away from end of week reports to the sanctuary in time that is Shabbat.
I closed my computer, hugged my granddaughter and thanked God for my ‘little Angel’. You see, I forgot a major lesson of the Sabbath. It teaches us that we are not God and the world does not depend on us!
Another lesson we learn from the Sabbath is to number our days. We have six days to do what we must. The six days of labor correlates to one live to live. On Friday evening the sun sets and the week is over. As I’ve told my granddaughter on many Friday afternoons (in response to ‘wait a minute’), “The sun waits for no one.”
There will come a day when the sun will set on our life and we will enter into the final rest – the ultimate Shabbat. That final sunset waits for no one. Yet it is not something to fear, not something to dread, and not something to stress over as I’d come to do on Fridays.
Rather, it is a precious time that we will be with our Creator. All the stress of life will fade away at the glory of seeing His face. That is the Sabbath – a taste of things to come, a practice run of doing all we can in the time allotted then entering into His sweet rest. A whole day when we can experience Heaven on earth.
So I’ve decided that things have to change around the Pinto household. I will do what I can during the week to get my job done and trust God will bless it, that it will be enough. If not, if I am canned, then God has a better plan for me because He is a good Father.
Yes, I too seem to be fighting off the determination of the world to walk contrary to G-d, and the fact that people only seem able to do repairs at my house on Saturdays!
Desperately I am grabbing Friday evenings, and really enjoying them, hoping to please Abba in the fact that I remember the Sabbath, even if I keep it ill!
And one day, the house will be repaired, and I can stop putting up with the world. It is a hard choice between good stewardship of what Abba has given me, and honoring Shabbat when I am not required to just because I know Abba made that day especially to enjoy all that he had made.
I look forward to a Shabbat in a house that doesn’t deteriorate.
It always seems to get worse around the holidays. I am starting to stress with Passover just a few days away and 30 people coming to dinner.
Given that I have a very small townhouse, I’ll be putting up plastic to close off my back porch to fit another table, as well as moving furniture to bedrooms. No garage in this home, but G-d.
I’m looking forward to the Shabbat day that never ends, in His presence. And hey! We’ll get to meet face-to-face!