Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
(Exo 20:8-11)
A key concept is that of
holiness. To keep the Sabbath holy (or any of the other sabbaths, for that matter) involves
separation. Holiness means separation. A thing is holy when it is separated from regular, ordinary, profane use, and separated to God, to divine service.
For example, a baptism is technically simply a bath. But there are things that separate baptism from an ordinary bath. The invocation of the name of Jesus Christ in prayer, the intent, the solemnity that surrounds it, these things separate a baptism from a mere bath.
So it is with both the weekly Sabbath, and the annual sabbaths. They should be separated from the other regular ordinary days of the week/year.
Obviously, one way is through the use of
rest. Since we cease from ordinary labour on those days, as God ceased from His labour of creation on the first Sabbath, we separate the day from the ordinary days. It is
different. Moreover, by imitating our Father, we further separate it from the other ordinary days, because we are doing things on that day in particular imitation of Him (He is our example). Interestingly, in doing this, we also in a sense sanctify the other ordinary days. God did His work during the 6 ordinary days f the first week, we do our work during the 6 days f the regular week. So even the profane or ordinary becomes in a sense sanctified by keeping the Sabbath holy (sanctified). Setting apart the seventh day to the Lord by simply doing what He said to do, because He said to do it, provides for a sanctification of all of our time, as being devoted to God, each day or aspect in its proper place.
Another aspect of separating the day involves recognising and demarcating or
marking off the beginning and end of the day. When the 6th day ends, and the Sabbath begins, we are now on holy time, as it were. So
marking that transition from ordinary to sacred can be a very expedient and worthwhile thing to do. In other words, do something different at the start and at the end of the Sabbath (whether the weekly Sabbath or any other sabbath). Our family "welcomes the Sabbath" and "says goodbye to the Sabbath" as it were at it's start and end. (We're not really saying "good bye" though, we are simply indicating that we are back on ordinary time. And by doing such, even ordinary time becomes in a sense holy, as dedicated to God's purposes. Workdays for work, Sabbath for rest, as God established.)
Our Friday evening meal (the first evening of the Sabbath, at the start of the Sabbath) is usually as nice a meal as we can make it (without necessarily making it a full blown Thanksgiving type meal, of course). We used to use special plateware and tablecloth and table setting that we didn't use throughout the rest of the week. I say used to because that stuff has now gotten old and it's probably time to replace it with some new table ware lol.
We begin with prayer. We usually actually sing
Psalm 95:1-6, with verses 7-11 being prayed, and including at the very least
Hebrews 4:9 and 4:11 or words to the same effect. We then pray a prayer of thanksgiving for both the Sabbath and the food, and conclude with
Psalm 67:1-2.
At the end of the Sabbath, we give thanks for God's rest and for His blessings, and then usually pray or sing
Psalm 24 (which is according to the Greek Bible and ancient tradition the psalm for the first day of the week), thus announcing as it were that we are now in the first of the week and back on ordinary time.
The annual feast days are usually a little bit more involved, but it's really like the way people do Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter or whatever, in that they decorate their house and do various things to indicate those days are "holidays". The difference here is that we're talking about God's calendar, with the emphasis being where God placed it, rather than what the world's doing or thinking or emphasizing.
Tabernacles is like picnicking or even camping. Passover is like a big Easter celebration. Our kids often do a "leaven hunt" going through the house and collecting whatever leaven can be found, including some of the leavened items we have hid in various places. Pentecost is like a one day Thanksgiving event, but we do get involved in the "counting" of the days each day from Passover forward. It helps connect Passover with Pentecost. Trumpets is almost like a version of New Year's Day with all the noisemaking, although it isn't about any "new year" or making noise for the sake of making noise, obviously.
There are lots of ways to keep God's holy days. The basic guidelines are given in the Scripture (both old testament and new testament), but most of the details are necessarily left to us. The main thing is we begin to see our entire life and it's "time cycles" being
regulated by God and His Word. It takes the old saying "God is in charge" and makes it even more real and experiential to us on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis.
Now, it IS somewhat difficult considering our surrounding society is obviously not in tune with any of this. But if anything that just reminds us that we are really pilgrims and strangers here in this world system, that our God is SEPARATE from the world and it's ways and we are, too.
At this point, I couldn't imagine going back to the world and its vain traditions. I'd be utterly bored and unsatisfied.