There are certain places that feel sacred to me—the chapel where I was married, the lake at sunset, my garden when everything is in bloom.
God made us so intricately. When we come into a place where we have felt God’s presence before, our minds and hearts often automatically settle into a more peaceful state. Just entering a sacred space can make us more aware of God’s presence.
Our culture, like many cultures, assigns meaning to certain sacred places. Certain mountains, buildings, and beaches have spiritual significance. While the Bible talks about certain places having significance, God also has given us a sanctuary that can be taken with us anywhere. It’s a tabernacle in time rather than space.
As I have made a practice of taking one day a week to rest, that Sabbath day also feels sacred. This string of small hours is where I do little of consequence and yet dwell with God.
When the children of Israel were wandering in the desert as they fled from Egypt to the Promised Land, God told them to build a tabernacle or a tent of meeting that would represent the presence of God to them. (You can read all about it in Exodus 25-40). It could be folded up and carried with them since they were nomads.
The Hebrew word Mishkan, often translated in English as “tabernacle,” can also be translated “to rest.” While the roots of the English word point us toward a tent or building, the Hebrew word has a much richer meaning.
“Mishkan is related to the Hebrew word to ‘dwell’, ‘rest’ or ‘live in’ referring to the [In-dwelling] ‘Presence of God.’ The Shekhina (or Shechina) (based on the same Hebrew root word as Mishkan), that dwelled or rested within this divinely ordained mysterious structure.” [1]
So God says, build me a tabernacle. It’s not just a tent, it’s an invitation given to a restless wandering people, to rest with God, to dwell. By building a tabernacle for God, his people were paradoxically sheltered by God. They had a physical reminder of a spiritual reality: God is with us, wants to dwell with us, wants to rest with us. God is not just in one place, but dwells among us and can move with us.
So the ideas of prayer, rest and dwelling with God are all related. When we invite God to dwell with us, we live in him, we rest in him, we dwell with him, and are sheltered by him in a house of prayer. And that tabernacle, that sanctuary, goes with us.
Sabbath is a tabernacle in time which God invites us to visit each week. Sabbath is not a place but exists only in time. It is a sanctuary in which we can dwell with God, rest with him. By setting aside a day for God, we create a tabernacle. We set aside our work, our routine, to enjoy the gift of time with God. For that is what Sabbath truly is: a gift of time.
Sabbath brings us into simply resting in the presence of God. Sabbath is a day we know that we are not God. In Sabbath rest, we echo the poem-prayer of David in Psalm 131:
My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Sabbath and prayer are intimately connected—a place to rest with God, carved out of time. In a way, the physical tabernacle was simply a visible reminder of a spiritual reality—that God dwells with us.
Keri Wyatt Kent is the author of seven books, including Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity (Zondervan 2009) which this column is adapted from. Learn more at www.SabbathSimplicity.com
From Manfred Schreyer’s website, www.spiritrestoration.org., used with permission.
