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99. Sabbath Rest with Sandy Feit **Transcription Below** “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” -Isaiah 53:5 (NIV) Sandy Feit was born in 1950 and raised in a Conservative Jewish family. She unexpectedly met her Messiah in 1980 and has been on a grand spiritual adventure ever since. By day, Sandy works as Senior Copy Editor and staff writer for In Touch Ministries, and every Friday night, she can be found at her favorite place on earth—family dinner with her three children and eight grandkids. At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Sandy Feit’s Writing Collection The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith Thank You to Our Sponsors: Samaritan Ministries and Chick-fil-A East Peoria Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:01] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: In the midst of a health care crisis, you don't have to feel isolated and alone. Samaritan Ministries connects Christians who support each other through prayer, encouragement, and financial support for medical needs. Learn more at SamaritanMinistries.org. Thank you to Chick-fil-A East Peoria, one of our sponsors, for today's episode. You can place a mobile order for their drive-thru or for curbside pickup. Learn more at cfaeastpeoria.com. Sandy Feit and I originally met each other through her daughter, Jackie Coleman. I consider Jackie one of my dearest friends and I hope you had a chance to listen to her episode on friendship back in October of 2018. And now we get to sit under Sandy's teaching on Sabbath. We will cover the history of this gift and unpack how to incorporate this rhythm of rest into our lives today, if we so choose. [00:01:23] Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Sandy. Sandy Feit: Thanks, it's nice to be here. Laura Dugger: Would you just start us off by sharing your story with us? Sandy Feit: Sure. I was brought up in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1950s, and we had a sizable Jewish community, which was pretty insulated. And this all felt normal to me, but now looking back, I think it's likely that it was related to how recent the Holocaust was. So it made sense that there was this self-protective reaction against assimilation. But what that meant for me was I grew up with an attitude of us versus them, where "us" was anyone Jewish, and "them" was everybody else. It didn't matter whether they were friends of Israel, lovers of Jews, or anti-Semitic. They were all "them". So the way that played out in my life was I had almost exclusively Jewish friends. I dated only Jewish boys, and I was almost never in a Gentile home. [00:02:26] As for religion, ours was a conservative Jewish home, and that meant that I was brought up kosher. I never tasted a cheeseburger or lobster until after I was married. As for holidays and Sabbath, we had a lot of rules. Now, the rules varied from household to household. So if someone was orthodox, that meant that they probably wouldn't do any cooking from Friday evening to Saturday evening. They wouldn't do any driving. They wouldn't use electricity except on timers, so things would go on automatically. But the conservative, which we were, was more relaxed. So, mainly what I remember was that when Sabbath rolled around, we couldn't use pencils or crayons or scissors or sewing machine. And I was a kid who grew up to be an art major. So as you can imagine, that wasn't really pleasant for me. I wasn't a child who enjoyed reading, which is ironic because I grew up to become an editor. But I just felt that these rules were very restrictive and frustrating for me. [00:03:30] So starting on Sunset Friday, I just couldn't wait for Sundown Saturday. In general, though, I felt good about being Jewish. I was proud to be one of the chosen people, but I had no idea what we were chosen for. God Himself didn't seem very integral to our experience of Judaism. It struck me more as a lifestyle of rules, and mostly man-made rules at that. So when I left for college, I didn't see a reason to remain observant. I was a good person, and to me that just felt like enough. What did I have instead of religion? I think of it more as a paradigm. My hypothesis of how life worked was that I was lucky. Things went my way. In school, I did very well academically. I married a Jewish doctor. I had a nice job. I had one child who was, by the way, born right on her due date. And we had four grandparents all living within a mile of us. And child number two was on the way. [00:04:30] So everything was going according to plan. The only problem was that it was my plan. And then my water broke unexpectedly 12 weeks early, and Jonathan, our second child, was born weighing a frightening three pounds. The head of the NICU said, "Don't worry, 28-weekers are hard to manage, but we're good at it." And I figured, "Hey, I'm lucky." So this might be a little rigorous, but I just assumed everything would work out fine. Well, we kind of bumbled along for four weeks, and then all of a sudden, Jonathan got an overwhelming infection. He was rushed to surgery on a Friday and died two days later. By the way, he died on April 1st. So that was a really hard time for me. So my paradigm of things go my way had collapsed. And that fall, as if I needed further evidence that I wasn't in charge of my life, a subsequent pregnancy proved abnormal. [00:05:31] It was something called a molar pregnancy, where the placenta can turn cancerous and the baby gets blighted. At any rate, I ended up on chemotherapy and weekly blood tests for months. Elliot, my husband, knew I needed help and he approached a new hospital social worker. He was a pediatrician in the hospital and he knew this social worker that people considered wise and asked if she would just come and talk to me. Well, Ellen was a really good listener, and she wasn't afraid to take on my questions, and she wasn't afraid of the pain I was in. And I found it very comforting to be with her. So I would ask her questions like, how can you stand working in that unit where children die? And she would answer, "Well, I have a strong faith." And I didn't even see the connection. What did faith have to do with that? So I remember asking her, what religion are you? And she said, Christian. I didn't really understand that word if I had heard others. [00:06:31] Jewish mind doesn't really have a good category for all the different types of Christians. So I said, well, are you Catholic or Gentile or Baptist? And she said, "Just just Christian. But it's not a religion, it's a relationship." Again, I didn't really have any understanding of what that meant. Eventually, I asked her something that I don't even recall, but I remember her answer as clear as anything, because her answer was that the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. Well, I didn't know what to do with that. It was offensive to me. I was Jewish. She knew I was Jewish. I thought, how can she say that? She knows what I've been through. I knew at this point I'm supposed to throw her out of my house, but she had been my life preserver. That was the only thing that gave me any comfort, and I knew I couldn't do that either. So I just answered her by saying, "Well, I believe my Judaism is true." And she amazed me by agreeing. But she added that if Judaism is true, then Christianity must also be, because there are so many Old Testament prophecies that aren't fulfilled until the New Testament. [00:07:36] Well, that certainly confused me because I always thought that the Old Testament was my Bible, was for Jews, and the New Testament was for Gentiles. I had no idea that they had anything to do with each other. So she asked me if I had a Bible, and I found the one I had been given at my bat mitzvah. So she took me on a six-month research project through the prophecies in my own Bible, and a portrait of my own Messiah began to take shape. And this is what my Bible said about Him. He would be born of a virgin. He would be born in Bethlehem. His hands and feet would be pierced. And said he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due. Well, this was sounding an awful lot like a "them" because I grew up down the street from a Catholic school and every Easter there was a poster out front that showed Jesus on the cross and it said, "He died for your sins." [00:08:37] I had no idea what that meant, but now reading in Isaiah 53 that He was crushed for our iniquities and He was cut off for my people, it kind of went, click, and all of a sudden I realized that that is who these prophecies in my Bible were about. So that is how I came to believe in Jesus. That night at the kitchen table, I thought that I had finally reached the finish line, not realizing that it was actually the starting line, and I've been on a little journey ever since. Laura Dugger: That is so captivating to hear your story. I've never heard all of those details about Jonathan, and I'm sure that recent anniversary was still tough. Sandy Feit: Well, actually, it used to be very hard. I taught in a Christian school, I was an art teacher there, and every April 1st, the kids would think it was great fun to play April Fools jokes on all the teachers. So whenever they did to me, I would just kind of snap, you know, that's not funny. [00:09:39] One day, my son also played an April Fool's joke, and I did the same thing to him, and he said, "But Mom, April 1st is the day that Jonathan met Jesus." And it just turned everything around for me. So now I actually appreciate the day. And I realized that my entire family was on a different trajectory because of that day and what happened on it. So now if I had to rewrite the story of my life, I would not leave that part out. Laura Dugger: Your maturity is so incredible to hear. I'm just curious with a few follow-up questions. So at this point, when you came to know Jesus, you were still in Rhode Island at this point, is that right? Sandy Feit: That's right. Laura Dugger: How did you explain this then to your family, or did you keep that to yourself? Sandy Feit: Well, it took me two years to tell my mother. It was really very hard to do, but eventually it just kind of bubbled out. [00:10:39] I had been having dreams about it and it had been coming between us without her knowing that I would feel this big distance. So finally, I just told her and she had a strange reaction. At first, she said, "Well, you sound so happy. Why don't you tell your sister?" Because my sister at the time was having some struggles. So I sort of couldn't believe my ears. And I quick called my sister and told her. And she has always been very open to me. But the next day, my mother kind of thought about it and said, "You know, I was thinking about what you said and what does that mean in terms of our family and all the relatives and her grandparents?" And then she started distancing herself from it. She came to have a really hard time with it. But we managed to get past it in our relationship and had a good relationship. But I wasn't really allowed to talk about that part of my life, which, as you can imagine, when it's in every fiber of your being, that's very tricky to do. But we navigated it okay. She died a few years ago, and I never quite got the answer from her that I had hoped, but God didn't leave me without hope either. [00:11:46] There were certain things that happened at the end that make me think, Maybe she was coming around in her own way. And that's what I cling to. Laura Dugger: I love how He gives us that personal hope. Sandy Feit: Mm-hmm. Laura Dugger: Then what about with Elliot and your children? When did you share about Jesus with them? Sandy Feit: Well, Elliot, that was very interesting because he brought the social worker, Ellen, to our house, so he knew her very well from work. And the w…
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