Every Adventist kitchen knows the Friday afternoon panic. The haystack fixings need chopping, the potluck casserole is still raw, and sunset doesn’t care.
The Bible does say something about this. In Exodus 16, Moses tells Israel to bake and boil their manna on the sixth day so they can rest on the seventh. Exodus 35:3 goes further and says not to light a fire in your homes on the Sabbath. Taken literally, that’s your stove and probably your kettle too.
Hardly any of us live that way. Ellen White wrote that “cooking upon the Sabbath should be avoided,” but in the very next breath she said “it is not necessary to eat cold food.” In cold weather, she said, heat up what you made the day before. She even told families to make the Sabbath meal a treat, something they don’t get every day. So the old standard was to cook on Friday, warm it up on Sabbath and make it nice.
Jesus’ disciples got into trouble over food once. They picked some grain as they walked through a field, and the Pharisees said they were breaking the Sabbath. Jesus told them the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.
So I’d ask a different question. Who spent Sabbath morning stuck in the kitchen while everyone else rested? And who got fed? A pot of Friday’s soup heated up for a visitor who had nowhere to go after church sounds pretty close to what the day is for.
What’s the rule in your house?
Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-brown-shirt-standing-in-kitchen-cooking-5491321/)
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