We crave slowing down. We yearn, most days, for a slower, more sustainable pace to our lives.
How can then we learn to slow down this summer?
We can find it by a practicing a daily Sabbath moment.
Let’s begin with this – that slowing down is a command. God clearly commanded rest via the 4th of the famous 10 Commandments, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God …Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” With a smile, God even holds himself to account here – “God rested” and so should we, and we honor God with that rest.
It is not of course that we practice, in our frantic modernity a full, 24-hour Sabbath. I know no one who does. But we can find Sabbath moments, times carved out with special attention to peace and pace. 10 minutes. Or 7 minutes. Or 2 minutes. Find a place to touch peace and to touch pace.
We find those moments through prayer, mediation, reading, music, stillness – take your pick. The best diet, as one dear friend, is the one you can stick to. But do it. Commit to the time and leverage the practice.
For me Sabbath comes early most days, as I settle down with a book, open to the quiet insight I hope God desires to share. That insight comes in stillness, arrives, TS Eliot wrote, “as the sound between the waves.”
It is a Sabbath moment.
It is how we slow down.
Shalom.
Wishing you peace this summer – and a slower pace a few minutes at a time.
