The Sabbath is a way to begin this sense of love and humility for Creation. It is also is a way to living a peaceful life. For one day, we do not work. We walk to attend synagogue and drive only when walking is not possible. We do not cook and we do not shop. We use the day for relaxation, contemplation and to ask ourselves: what is the real purpose of human life? Are we here on earth only to get and to spend? As Rabbi Ismar Schorsch has written, “To rest is to acknowledge our limitations. Willful inactivity is a statement of subservience to a power greater than our own.”
Prayer also helps us to recognize that everything we are, everything we have and everything we use ultimately comes from God. When we say a blessing, we create a moment or holiness, a sacred pause. Prayer also creates an awareness of the sacred by taking us out of ourselves and our artificial environments and allowing us to truly encounter natural phenomenon. Prayer creates a loss of control, which allows us to “see the world in the mirror of the holy.” We are then able to see the world as an object of divine concern and we can then place ourselves beyond self and more deeply within Creation
Prayer also helps us to recognize that everything we are, everything we have and everything we use ultimately comes from God. When we say a blessing, we create a moment or holiness, a sacred pause. Prayer also creates an awareness of the sacred by taking us out of ourselves and our artificial environments and allowing us to truly encounter natural phenomenon. Prayer creates a loss of control, which allows us to “see the world in the mirror of the holy.” We are then able to see the world as an object of divine concern and we can then place ourselves beyond self and more deeply within Creation