Today as I worked at the Messiah Congregation building, I was struck by how much has changed in that space over the years. Not only the space itself, but the people. The building may not be a stadium or a gothic cathedral, but the people who grow there, together, are tabernacles of incomparable beauty to the structures of man’s imagination.

I am not so concerned with building a cathedral in space, as I am in time, in presence, in sanctity, and eternity, together.

Rabbi Dr Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “The sabbath is to time what the temple and tabernacle are to space. The sabbath is a cathedral in time. On the seventh day we experience in time what the tabernacle and temple represented as spaces which is eternal life, God in the complete creation.”

This cathedral in time, the Shabbat, is a raptured experience of stepping out of our hurried time, into the holiness of His time. The physical worship of the Living God in rest, refreshment, and communion. Leaving behind the restrictions of the harried schedule, and stepping into the cathedral in time where He and we are present.

Voices lifted, arms raised, hearts open, and adoration of the Risen Lord mirrored in the face of the other. Who sits enthroned in this cathedral in time? But the Lord of the Sabbath Himself: Messiah Yeshua/ Jesus. As He taught, “For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:18).

It matters not, the opulence of the space, but the presence of the Sabbath Lord. He reigns in His majestic cathedral fabricated not by brick and mortar, but heart and soul knit together by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:16).

Step out, and step in, and in Him you will find rest for your soul (Matt. 11:28-30). You are a renewed body in space, experiencing a timeless, abiding rest in King Messiah.

Shabbat Sholom.