Everyone and everything is commanded to celebrate the Sabbath. 17It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. The Sabbath is a weekly reminder of the covenant. Sabbath means we practice shavat, or cessation. Abraham Heschel, one of the first Jewish authors I was exposed to some thirty years ago, suggests that the genius of the Jewish Sabbath lies in its sanctification of time.
Technical civilization is about subduing nature, mastery over space, things.
Our imagination tends to mold all concepts in its image. The Sabbath invites us to become attuned to the holiness of time. It is not just a set period of time but rather a way of living in time, a discipline which allows us to become more aware of the deeper meaning of events and of our lives. We are invited to live in God's present, neither fretting about the past nor worrying about the future. We remember that our world is not simply a place of doing, of working, producing, accomplishing.