Every Seventh Day a Miracle

It is a beautiful Saturday morning in the fall. Over the past 3 years, my wife and I have begun living into what we have termed #aPastorsShabbat which begins every Friday evening and continues until Saturday evening. What started out as an “etch a sketch” type of practice in our home has begun to take on new shape, color, and brilliance. It has taken me over 20 years of ministry to figure out how in the world, and how in a clergy work week, a pastor can receive the gift of Shabbat.  Once our family began to rediscover this buried treasure in our Jewish/Christian family story, we became newly resolved to make sure we never again shun, ignore or forget the transformation and restoration this gift offers.

I am hopeful that I can begin to use this blog as a place to periodically reflect on Shabbat, along with other musings about life and ministry. For today, I wanted to leave a gem from today’s Saturday morning Shabbat reading. It comes from the one book on our ever expanding Shabbat shelf that can never be read too many times:

“Every seventh day a miracle comes to pass, the resurrection of a soul, of the soul of [person] and of the soul of all things. A medieval sage declares: The world which was created in six days was a world without a soul. It was on the seventh day that the world was given a soul. This is why it is said: ‘and on the seventh day He rested vayinnafash’ (Exodus 31:17); nefesh means a soul.”

–Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath