You didn’t want to pick the wrong elevator at our hotel today, particularly if your room’s on one of the upper floors.
It’s the Jewish sabbath, you see…so one bank of elevators — designated “Shabat”– is programmed to automatically stop on every level.
This allows observant Jews to use the lifts without pushing a button… thereby (at least technically) honoring the prohibition against work on the seventh day.
I find the practice intriguing. At the very least, I noticed, it DOES increase one’s mindfulness of God.
Even if you don’t particularly care for the rule, you have to acknowledge its origin. So, ready or not, you DO wind up giving God…God’s due.
Serendipitously, our pilgrimage group had some re-creational time built into the schedule today. We rested in a particularly memorable way…as a handful of Shabat adventurers headed off for a dip in the Dead Sea.
Including yours truly.
And yes, I’ll post a picture or two. But only after providing a warning…
Some viewers might find the following content objectionable:
I know, I know: You really can’t “un-see” those images.
But you DO have to marvel in the inventiveness of our Creator God. How else to explain a massive sea, situated nearly 1,300 feet below “sea level”?
Or water buoyant enough…to float an ample bloke like me?
God gives us Shabat, I’ve decided, at least in part to ensure that we don’t get too caught up in the distractions of daily life…or too busy to appreciate a natural wonder like the Dead Sea.
“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”
Gen 2:3
Let us remember that we are in the presence of the Holy and Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 
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