I’m well into my Sabbath series and as I began writing this series a few months ago, I was struck with the thought of how counter cultural all of this is, the rhythms around the Sabbath, that is.
I mentioned in one post that a lot of our prep day falls on my shoulders, it’s a lot of cooking and cleaning. This post is less about what I do, you can read that in a few other posts, and more about who I am, the character God is crafting.
Women, specifically wives and mothers, play an important role within the family structure — they are generally the nurturers, the cultivators, the ones who nourish and support and physically, and spiritually, feed their young ones. Wives and mothers are created to tend to the needs of their home and husbands and children and have an obvious design in their work that is deeply purposeful.
But as culture continues to change and pulls women away from the home and what they were designed to manifest within the family structure, rhythms such as eating meals together, gathering for Bible time and all the beautiful rhythms surrounding the Sabbath, are more easily overlooked and set aside for a “someday” lifestyle. It doesn’t take long and isn’t hard to find this evidently true, I’ve seen this happen within families we know and love. Does this mean I believe wives and mothers shouldn’t work? Not at all, I believe wives and mothers can do both and do both very well, but if their heart is more attuned to what is happening outside the home compared to inside the walls of their home and the hearts of their family, then important rhythms begin to fall apart.
Proverbs says it best, “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down” (Proverbs 14:1). The amplified version of this verse it explains it more in depth: The wise woman builds her house [on a foundation of godly precepts, and her household thrives], But the foolish one [who lacks spiritual insight] tears it down with her own hands [by ignoring godly principles].
I believe inside every woman is a longing to gather and host, to create something beautiful and have others enjoy it. This doesn’t mean that every woman’s table would be set in one particular way or the same foods would be prepped and served, or even prepped at all. I mean, in the simplest form, that we were given an innate desire to create and to nourish, to use our hands and open our homes for the good of those around us.
But it’s us who create the stumbling blocks for this not to play out. We fix our eyes on the instagram feeds of those who have mastered an ornate table setting but won’t try it ourselves. Or maybe we are the ones on social media sharing photos of our table but the only eyes that see it are our “followers” and not our actual neighbors or friends or family members. It’s as if we know what we want but won’t do the work to get it done.
Jesus related the Kingdom of Heaven to a treasure worth finding, a lost pearl someone is desperately searching for and a king who threw a banquet. When woman open the doors to their home, they are opening a door for someone to find a treasure and priceless pearl. When women choose to throw a party they are taking part in Kingdom work — creating a small pocket of heaven within the walls of their home.
The Sabbath, in our home, is a weekly celebration, a party that happens every 7 days. It’s the perfect opportunity for me to gather, to nourish, to invite and host and create a space for others to delight in stopping, resting, feasting and worshipping. It’s a holy day, set aside to enjoy what we already have and for me to open the doors to my home with no other expectation than to create a slice of heaven for my family and those we love.
We personally invite others into our celebration of the Sabbath at specific times, like Saturday afternoons and into the evening, and Sunday afternoons we gather with our small group through church. But often it’s just us, our small and growing family enjoying the simplest delights on the Sabbath. There’s no cleaning or yard work to be done, no checking emails or responding to people (our phones are usually turned off and put away in a drawer anyways). We don’t often spend money or talk about what we want or need to get done or about work in any form. Our home is generally quiet, maybe soft music wafting from room to room, we spend lots of time outside on nice days or curled up in front of the fire when the weather turns cool. I don’t prepare food (besides baking a loaf of sourdough bread to be served at dinner), or run errands, the laundry machine is rarely ever turned on and I insist that our dish washer doesn’t even work on the Sabbath.
In order for all this to happen, there is indeed a great need of prep work to be done. Which I take on, most of the time with joy and other times it’s honestly stressful — to get all the grocery shopping done, homeschool items checked off, floors washed, clothes folded and neatly put away. But there’s honor to be held in the chaos and hard work of tending to a home and the hearts of children. I love when my kids see me flourish and it’s humbling for them to see me striving for perfect which can never be attained, both are represented when I’m preparing our home and food for the Sabbath. But I wouldn’t change anything or nix the Sabbath for the sake of convenience or modern living. I’m teaching and modeling to my young children what it looks like to work hard and serve and make sacrifices, what honoring the Lord looks like outside of Biblical times. It gives them responsibility and ownership in their table, their home — they take part in setting the table, gathering flowers to cut and place in vases, it gives them vision for their future home and family — the table they will someday invite others to sit around and rest and delight.
The best part of the Sabbath, to me personally, is that the Sabbath doesn’t begin when my list of to-do’s is checked off, it simply begins when the Lord says it begins, which traditionally is around sundown. There’s something sacred (and sanctifying) about not getting all of my work done. God is crafting a unique and beautiful soul inside each woman who dies to self and abides in Him, the rhythm of the Sabbath