Sabbath, Our Reminder

Just the other day I received a call from my son. When I answered the phone he said, “Shabbat Shalom!” I replied, “Shabbat Shalom?” to which he responded, “Why are you so shocked that I said Shabbat Shalom on the Shabbat?”

To be honest, my son was in the death-throes of higher education for the last ten years, the last 3 1/2 of which were in the medical field and very demanding on his time and his brain activity. He even told during those years to not talk to him as he had no more brain cell receptors! He had nowhere to put the information! After about six months to decompress since graduating, the seeds of his childhood are sprouting in ways that blesses me as his mother. As the study brain cells no longer take up as much room, the original brain cells carrying his spiritual training have room to move around and re-establish themselves.

Because it was Shabbat, he wanted to chat about the Sabbath. He asked me why God created man. My initial response was ‘to give Him glory’ believing that was the correct answer. He told me that was a good response, but was not the reason God created Adam.

Why did God create Adam? Simply, Adam was created to tend and cultivate the Garden of Eden.

“Adonai, God, took the person and put him in the garden of ‘Eden to cultivate and care for it” (Genesis 2:15).

My son made two observations. Man was not created to sit in a cubical working his days away. Man was created to interact with the earth. I remembered another conversation we had about our feet and the earth. He told me that research shows numerous health benefits on the human body through the earth’s electromagnetic field. The only way to reap these benefits as a human battery made of minerals and water is to run barefoot through the grass with our feet touching the ground. In other words, get out of the cubicle, take off your shoes, wiggle your toes in the dirt or sand, and be healthier. As he now lives in a place where there is a huge garden for him to tend with flowers and fruit trees, along with a goldfish pond and a little bridge over the waterway, he is being electromagnetically recharged from his years of intense battery meltdown.

The second observation he made about technology. The more tech – phones, computers, video games – in which people become immersed, the less they need or want God. They are electromagnetically pulled away from having a garden-conscious relationship with God because they are too busy filling their God-void with whatever electronic devices tell them to think and perform. Of course, even an all-consuming education or hobbies can do the same thing because nothing can fill the God-void except God. And, He has us the Shabbat to do it.

My son continued by saying that God wrote The Ten Commandments on tablets of stone because these were the commandments He wanted His people to really know and understand. Though there are other commandments throughout Leviticus and Numbers, these Ten are the ones that are most important to God’s heart. These Ten are the ones that He wrote by His Hand for us, His people.

The conclusion of what became a Sabbath study was that God created the Shabbat and we, as His people, are to remember it because He wants us to remember we were created by Him in an eternal state of rest. To separate ourselves from the Shabbat, the one day that God set aside to meet with with us as in the Garden, is to lose all rest and peace, both spiritual and physical We lose our connection with God in the present and ultimately our connection with Him in Eternity when Shabbat is restored.

©2019 Tentstake Ministries Publishing, Dr. Jacob Almanrode, D.C.