Summer is a time many people plan their vacation, or at least a few leisurely evenings for friendly conversation over barbecues,beside a pool, on a boat or skiff, or along a mountain brook. This is nothing akin to laziness. It is in many cases the real work and stuff of life. Every human being has a need for a Sabbath rest. It is part of what God meant for us when he created us. The Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel, writes of rest in the Sabbath tradition: “The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time, rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to the holiness of time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”
