Bringing Shabbat Home | How to Prepare for Shabbat
Shabbat has always been a corporate experience for us, but in the past few years, we’ve seen more and more people prepare for Shabbat at home. They are bringing the heart of Shabbat into their dwelling places, blessing their family and the atmosphere where they spend their most intimate and comforting moments.
There have been seasons of bringing Shabbat home that were such a gift to us as parents. They brought to light not only how to prepare for Shabbat and home but gave us a deeper understanding of the heart behind the day. This helped us to better build a foundation of faith for our children.
Prepare for Shabbat | Your Home
Cleaning the Home, Making Challah Bread, Cooking a Meal
- Cleaning: Friday is a cleaning day for our family as we prepare our home for Shabbat. As Ariebella, our daughter, gets older, we have her help by picking up her toys and her room.
- Making Challah Bread: We will also typically make challah bread, which is a traditional braided yeast bread. We eat this with our Shabbat dinner or make French Toast with it the next day. Ariebella loves to help, and I cherish her sweet expectation of both making it and eating it!
My husband’s mother, Nonnie, makes challah bread every Friday, so it is a small familiar gift I can give him. (Though mine is never quite as good!)
- Cooking a Meal: Our family loves cooking together. We prepare a nice meal of our family’s favorite recipes. This might be roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus, salad, and of course, challah bread!
We like to set this meal apart from others throughout the busy week, so we might break out my grandma’s china.
What’s important to remember as you prepare for Shabbat is the heart behind and the fruit that follows the actions.
- Is it something you and your family look forward to?
- Is it something you all can take part in?
We like to think of it as symbolically returning to the Father’s table and creating an atmosphere that my husband and I, as well as our children, will remember.
The Blessings of Preparing Your Home for Shabbat
The act of cleaning, making challah bread, and cooking a meal helps us prepare for Shabbat as a family. It sets aside time, creates conversations, and gives each of us a stake in the shared responsibility of cultivating experiences that honor the Father, the day, and each other.
Preparing for Shabbat | Your Heart
We prepare our hearts by remembering the faithfulness of our Father and thank Him for supplying our every need and our salvation through Yeshua.
The meal is opened when we light the Shabbat candles. Just like our Father, we create light and “set the time.” Then we say the blessing over the bread and the wine. We thank Him for the week’s provision and the sacrifice of Yeshua.
Blessings We Say When…
- Lighting the Candles
In English:
“Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the Shabbat candles.”
The Phonetic Hebrew Transliteration:
“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat”.
- Hamotzi (Blessing the Bread)
In English:
“Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
The Phonetic Hebrew Transliteration:
“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha’olam, ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.”
- Kiddush (Blessing the Wine)
In English:
“Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.”
The Phonetic Hebrew Transliteration:
“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, Melech ha-alom, bor-ay peri ha-gafen.”
The Blessings of Preparing Your Heart for Shabbat…
At the heart of Shabbat, we can see the Father’s true intention toward us. He desires a relationship with us that accepts His invitation to set aside time and enjoy the blessings He gives us with thankful hearts.
He invites us to rest with Him. True rest involves trust—setting aside time to invest in what and who is most important and letting go of the striving of the week.
God demonstrated this for us with His example embedded in the foundation of creation. He breathed life, blessed us to multiply, and then set in place the first piece of our culture: Shabbat.
The Takeaway
When we give our families and children the gift of Shabbat and allow them to participate, we are instilling in them one of our core values while setting the tone for the culture of our home and our faith.
Every week we are reminded of who we are as a family.
We are a family that yields to instruction. We yield to God’s timing. We yield to rest.
It is not only something we discuss and teach but something we practice—something we practice together.
And for this reason, the foundations of our faith and family become our bedrock, unmovable and unshakable, leaving a legacy that carries into the next generation.
Discover more about the significance of Shabbat and God’s intent for it.