The regular Sabbath day. It happens after every six days. It completes the week.
To understand Hebrew spirituality is to understand the steady drive for self improvement, for an honourable growth. The Sabbath rest is pivotal in this cycle. The goal isn’t “perfection” as we have come to understand it, but the completion of what one has begun. You mow the lawn to completion. The weekly activities are finished, but the completion does not come without the Sabbath. With the Sabbath rest, the activities and interactions of the week can be reflected upon. Thoughtful meditation and wisdom words from the ages–scriptures– allow the mind and body to greet the beginning of the next week for another cycle of activity.
The concept was easier to grasp when much of the world functioned in rural agricultural settings. The cycles of the seasons, crop growth, animal birthings ground a person in a way that urban and electronic life struggle to beat. I guess there are so many pet dogs in North America to compensate for the loss.
The rhythms of life are imbedded in the Jewish observances. It is potentially a mini-atonement day, a subtle course direction to avoid going completely off course.
For the Christian observance, the loss and reclamation story is re-enacted. Frankly, Jesus set up the timing to ensure that metaphor and allegory not be missed through his life and teachings and his death. His teachings, as with same or similar teachings from other rabbis, still come to us as breaths of fresh air. These truths of positive possibilities do not die.
The truth holds. There is life and living. We stay the course. We hold the rudder steady. Times grow dark. We all feel it. But light comes in the morning and the truths Rabbi Yeshua taught, and still teaches us, still ring true today.
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