God in My Everything: How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God

Every evening I try to set aside five or ten minutes to pray what Saint Ignatius called the prayer of Examen. After putting our toddler down, I lie on the futon next to his bed, quiet my thoughts, and hit the “play” button on the video of my day. I think about the people with whom I’ve spent time, the conversations I’ve had, the places I’ve been, a

We truly experience Sabbath when we orient our lives not around ourselves but around Jesus and listen and respond to his invitation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

We feel we have to do something to justify our existence. At school, at work, or as parents in the home we feel like we need to outrun our peers to validate our worth.

Benedict’s perspective can be summarized in the famous dictum, “To pray is to work; to work is to pray.”

God, the Creator of all things, the One who knows us better than anyone else and yet loves us more than anyone else, invites us to this friendship. Sharing time with God should never be seen as a duty: it’s a get to, not a have to; a may, not a must.1

Sabbath enabled me to study more effectively the other six days and made school feel less like a grind and more like a gift.

We need not just rest but a certain quality of rest: deep inner rest, rest from the inner murmur that says we are defined by what we do, what we have, or by what others think of us.

Part of the reason we can’t truly find rest is that we are trying to validate our existence to ourselves or to other people. To experience full rest, we need to be free from the voice of self-condemnation.

Marva Dawn, author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly,