Creator and Creation: Weekly Summary
Ellen Davis, addressing the temptation to promote Shabbos merely as a hedge against overwork and burnout, notes that “Exodus enjoins Sabbath observance on theological, not pastoral, grounds.” She writes that keeping the day holy enables us to “consider what it is to be the creatures of God, living among other creatures in a world that God has made.
... See moreNehemia Polen • Stop, Look, Listen: Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens
God renews the entire world every day. We make this declaration every day in our prayer service, acknowledging that every day can be a newly experienced birth and that we can once again see the world with the newness of a child.
Alan Lew • This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
PRAYERS THROUGHOUT THE DAY Lord, we always depend on your grace and hand in our lives. When I am about to pray, Lord, fix my attention! Awaken my holy affections, and pour out upon me the spirit of grace and of supplication (Zechariah 12:10). When I open my Bible—or any other good book—open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law
... See moreRobert Elmer • Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans (Prayers of the Church)
Shabbos morning is the time for re’u – for looking and seeing, for observing with gratitude the gifts we have been given, in order to savor them, to look at them appreciatively but not possessively, to recognize them as gifts of God.
Nehemia Polen • Stop, Look, Listen: Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens
Similarly, the act of seeing, witnessing, beholding, and appreciating our creative process is essential and nourishing. In fact, God’s creative process is bookended by this act of pausing and appreciating the good, as it says at the end of the creation story, “God saw all that God had made and it was very good.”2