Sabbath

image by J. Samuel Burner, Wikimedia Commons

You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

~Psalm 63:1-3

I have taken to observing a Saturday Sabbath (or technically Friday night to Saturday night.) The reason for observing it on a Saturday is that this was the original Sabbath and there was no compelling reason to change it except for the corrupt Church wanting to cater to pagan traditions.

Why observe one at all is a different subject, and I didn't use to observe one at all until very recently. I don't interpret its observance strictly in the sense of not doing any work at all. I still water my plants and cook meals and all of that.

When I was growing up in Texas we had the Blue Laws which regulated what activities were permissible (mainly having to do with purchasing alcohol) on Sunday, and in fact when I was growing up almost everyone (in my limited social circles) had Sunday off. Of course anything that comes into conflict with the real religion of this age, consumerism and business, winds up getting crushed. I don't wish the Blue Laws would come back, mind you, and Sunday isn't my Sabbath anyway. But the idea of a day set aside among a group of believers (not by law or social custom) to worship God is very appealing, and I have derived a lot of joy from my newfound Sabbath observance.

Freed from the desire to consider myself a Christian by any even remotely conventional criteria, I find myself picking up some Jewish ways of doing things almost by instinct. A serious (though non-legalistic) observance of the Sabbath, much less a Saturday Sabbath, was never part of my world of experience before now but it just seemed to flow naturally. While I was chanting the Shema I just felt inside myself that my head should be covered when praying such a holy prayer. I bought a prayer shawl (a Jewish Tallit) and started wearing it when praying. That does not make me a Jew any more than reading the New Testament makes me a Christian. I am something else altogether, but I feel drawn to these things. The Sabbath should be special, set apart, even though I have no interest in a sort of legalistic or technical observance. My understanding of God is mystical, not algorithmic.

Because I have no co-religionists that I know of, not conforming to any tradition, I cannot celebrate the Sabbath with other people. This is a shame, as I can only imagine what a glorious thing that could be. But it is glorious any way I can observe it, in ways that I find hard to explain to other people. If observing the Sabbath alone is glorious, how much more so in a community? But as of now I have none.

The Shekhinah, the presence of God, is with his people who are observing the Sabbath. Not because of their observance of an outward law but because of their obedience to an inward love.