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Mark 15:42, “This all happened on Friday, the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath.”

Did you know that there is actually a day that is called the day of Preparation? Most versions of the Bible translate Preparation with a capital P. It is a significant day. An important day.

The day of Preparation is the day before the Sabbath, the rest day. In the very beginning of time, God established the principle of a day of rest. It is His gift to us. But, as with many of God’s gifts, we often do not realize their importance, or even their blessing. I have to confess, especially being a workaholic, that although I have always known the principle of the day of rest, I have not always been successful in doing it.

How do you have a day of rest? There’s still so much to do. The meals have to be cooked. The house has to be cleaned. This and that has to be done. But God never tells us to do something without giving us a way of doing it. Here it is:

You cannot enjoy a day of rest, unless you have a day of Preparation the day before!

What a liberating principle! I stumbled on it a number of years ago when I started having a Shabbat meal every Friday evening. The word Shabbat is the Hebrew word for Sabbath, which means rest. We do not do the Shabbat meal because we are Jewish, or even because we are trying to be Jewish, although we love the Jewish people and love to celebrate the Feasts of the Lord. We enjoy Shabbat because it is the most beautiful family meal you could ever enjoy. Perhaps I’ll tell you more about it next week. In order to prepare for this meal, I  not only clean the house, but do the extra cleaning (such as clean the dirty spots off the carpet, wipe spots of the doors, disinfect the door handles), and prepare the special meal.

However, when I read this verse and saw that it was a Scriptural principle, I now do it with more meaning and more gusto.  It is my day of extra cleaning. I not only prepare the meal for Shabbat, but prepare extra food to last over the weekend and for our rest day.

Dear mother, would you like to try? You will be amazingly blessed. It is your stress reliever, and every mother needs a stress reliever. The day of Preparation will relieve you from stress…