I learned what the Sabbath was in 2005. That was also when I realized God was real and was likely very close to exactly the way He is described in the Bible. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some errors due to human fallibility, but within the limits of human comprehension, the descriptions were right.
This is when I started going to church, one that I now know was a fairly good one compared to many churches I’ve been to subsequently. It was an evangelical church, which made my wife happy. You should have seen her face light up when I told her I wanted to go to church with her on Sunday. She’d been wanting me to attend church with her probably from the day we met twenty years earlier.
At the time, I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her Christian faith. I loved her, but was perfectly happy if she went to church by herself and didn’t talk about it with me. From my perspective, shared by all the atheists who pushed this view on the world, Christianity was wrong and backward about everything. Religion was a panacea for the masses, a relic of ancient times when people were little more than neanderthals.
However, times do change and I eventually realized I was wrong. It took awhile, but it happened. I’m glad it did. The idea of going through life blind, deaf, and dumb, knowing nothing, not even the tiniest inkling, of God, is horrifying. It would mean that my entire mental construct of the world around me was false. It also made it possible to appreciate my wife so much more than previously. Her patience during those first twenty years is something I am very grateful for.
I enjoyed church so much, I started attending two churches, and sometimes went more than once a week. I even went to Bible study and enjoyed that too. The second church was Messianic. The first time I went was because a friend from the first church invited me. After that, it was because they focused on the Old Testament, while the other church focused on the New Testament. It was interesting to study both.
Pretty soon, I found out why church number 2 had service on Saturday: because it was the Sabbath. The only day set aside in any part of the Bible for that purpose, and one of the commandments as well. For that reason, I started following the Sabbath. My family was happy that I did. Now, they knew we could spend at least one day together every week, a family day.
At one point, I became so inspired by what I was reading about the high holy days that I decided to make a series of paintings to depict them. I wanted to put them in a modern context, because I felt they were as relevant today as they were when they originated.
A funny thing about this is that when I attended art school as a teenager, the focus was on personal expression and style. That always seemed silly to me because without craft, there is no way to express yourself or to naturally develop a style. Trying to do those things first couldn’t help but retard development. So I worked hard on craft, and got so used to it that I totally forgot about the personal expression part of it.
I liked going out to the mountains to hike, and made paintings when I did, but didn’t think of these as “personal expression.” They were still craft exercises, the kind of thing you do to warm up before you start expressing yourself.
When I made the first of my holy days paintings, I realized that I had just expressed myself for the first time as an artist. The painting is based on Yom Teruah, or The Feast of Trumpets. I called the painting, “Call to Prayer.” It depicts a modern rabbi wearing a prayer shawl and blowing a ram’s horn from a mountain peak in a traditional call to prayer.
My pastor (Christian, but married to a Jewish woman) was the model. His young son, who was constantly darting through his legs as I took reference photos, provided some entertainment. The backdrop is one of many beautiful mountains I’d seen in my travels, and drawn several times. It was a cloudy day, which disappointed me, but at just the right moment and in the right place, the clouds slightly parted and some sunlight streamed through. The ram’s horn was real, a gift from the pastor’s father-in-law.
The second painting, “Remember When” (at the top of this article) was my modern version of Passover. It depicts a modern family in a nice house, surrounded by the bounty of obedience to God: toys in the yard, a large family, and peace. The models for that painting were a family I knew from church. They had six kids and more on the way.
The pastor of a new church, church #3, asked me to make a cover for his publication based on Remember When. My painting was very wide and couldn’t be cropped for a vertical format magazine, so I made a new painting that focused on the family in the window as they gathered for Passover dinner.
He needed the new painting by Monday for publication. That meant I had to finish it by Friday. I painted as fast as I could. The sun kept getting lower in the sky, and I had to finish before it set. There was no way I was going to give a pastor a painting depicting a Sabbath meal that was painted on the Sabbath. I finished just in time, with a few minutes to spare. I put down my brush and went upstairs to my family for our Sabbath meal.
This is how it was for a couple of years, Then we moved to the Netherlands and everything changed. All stores were closed on Sunday. I worked as a university lecturer from Monday through Friday. If I followed the Sabbath, I wouldn’t be able to buy anything anywhere because my days were all spoken for. My wife could do the shopping on other days, but this lack of choice was very frustrating.
On top of that, I discovered that some people were offended by gentiles (Christians) who observed the Sabbath on Saturday. They felt the day was reserved for Jewish people. I didn’t want to offend them (though I disagreed with their reasoning) but I also didn’t want to stop following the Sabbath. Regardless, I did stop, after accepting an offer to write a book about Computer Graphics from an academic publisher. I simply couldn’t get it done, do my job, and avoid work on Saturday.
I stopped going to church because the churches there all had services in Dutch, which I didn’t understand. I did try a church that had a simultaneous translation into English via an earpiece, but the quality was so bad that I was better off listening to the Dutch version.
Now that I’m in the US, I’ve tried a number of churches. I hate to say it, but they’re weak compared to the ones I enjoyed in the early 2000’s. Most recently, the church I’ve been attending didn’t offer a prayer for President Trump the day after the attempted assassination in Butler, PA. If they can pray that Biden receive wisdom multiple times a year, they can, and should, pray for Trump, who is assaulted on all sides by implacable enemies.
All of this got me thinking about the Sabbath again. Yesterday, I was working on my Ohio report (which you will all see soon), when I saw the sun go down. I turned off my computer, made a prayer, and then sat down on my couch and read a portion of 1 Kings. It felt good.
I spent the next couple of hours with my family. That felt good too. And then I finished the Ohio report. I wanted to wait until after the Sabbath, but like before, I didn’t have the time. I also have to make corrections to a journal article I’ve submitted regarding findings in a third state, and another that I’ve started on a fourth.
Right now, I’m relaxing by writing this article, then I’ll spend some time with my family. I’ll probably do less work before sunset than usual, but I’m not back to full observance yet. I miss the Sabbath.
I'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts and seeing your art. Thank you. Blessings.
Some Christians get wound around the axle with respect to the sabbath. It's important to remember that Jesus said that the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. The sabbath is a gift from God. It's a day when you don't have to feel naughty for not doing anything because it's a command from God to observe it. I think God cares not one whit for which day you observe it on. Do it on Monday if that's better for you, but that said, I do think it's wise to gather with other believers on that day to strengthen your faith and relationships.