Shabbat Shalom

The 4th commandment (which Catholics have made the 3rd--more on that later) reads:

(Deuteronomy 5: 12-15) 12 ‘ Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (NKJ)

Did you ever think that in keeping the Sabbath, each week we get to symbolically experience the Creation? God created for 6 days and then rested on the 7th as a teaching for us so that we would understand His command. Think about it. Read Genesis 1-2:3

It seems some are confused as to what the sabbath means. Here is a dictionary definition:

Sabbath - O.E. sabat "Saturday," observed by the Jews as a day of rest, from L. sabbatum, from Gk. sabbaton, from Heb. shabbath, prop. "day of rest," from shabath "he rested." The Babylonians regarded seventh days as unlucky, and avoided certain activities then; the Jewish observance may have begun as a similar custom. From the seventh day of the week, it began to be applied c.1410 to the first day (Sunday), a change completed during the Reformation. The original meaning is preserved in Sp. Sabado, It. Sabbato, and other languages' names for "Saturday." Hung. szombat, Rus. simbata, Fr. samedi, Ger. Samstag "Saturday" are from V.L. sambatum, from Gk. *sambaton, a vulgar nasalized variant of sabbaton. ~ Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

I've been keeping the Sabbath since July and it has been a blessing in so many ways. There is so much meaning in this God-appointed day. One of the elements of the Sabbath is the candle-lighting before sunset on Friday. In case you are interested you can sign up to receive candle-lighting times and search thru the other resources on hebcal. This the current week's email:

Candle lighting for Friday, 19 October 2007 is at 5:41pm
This week's Torah portion is Parashat Lech-Lecha http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/lechlecha.html
Havdalah (72 min) for Saturday, 20 October 2007 is at 7:10pm
These times are for: Warwick, RI 02889 GMT -05:00 (U.S. Eastern)

Shabbat Shalom!