One of the powerful impacts of the Sabbath is that it interrupts the flow of whatever drives you in life and offers you the opportunity to gain perspective. You take some time out of your busy world to worship and you renew your connection with God and what God expects of you. Or perhaps you just enjoy what it feels like to be a loved child of God. You interrupt your focus on work to spend time in relationships and you recognize their importance to you. You pause for a time from being productive and pay attention to your body and mind’s need to rest and drink in the spirit.
While I don’t discount the importance of taking a full day as a Sabbath, I think there are benefits to interrupting the pace of your life for even fifteen minutes. Consider the impact of twice a day pausing to commune with God, your neighbor or loved one, or even just to breathe and gain perspective on your life. Somewhere I read that the root word for Sabbath in Hebrew carries the sense of pausing to breathe. Was that what God was doing in Genesis when, after creating for six days, he ceased work. Was God stepping back to review God’s work.
Fifteen minute Sabbaths can be experienced when your car arrives at a destination, before you get out and attend to whatever project awaits you. It can be experieced when you excuse yourself and enter a stall at a bathroom. It can be experienced while you eat alone at a restaurant. For those who are blessed with an office with a door to close, that is also a possibiliity. Consider taking a week in which you would try such fifteen minute Sabbaths twice a day.
