My sister is a busy woman. She and her husband have four kids, ages ten to seventeen. They live outside of town in a house with some property, along with a dog and several chickens. My brother-in-law works full-time outside the home, and she works part-time from home—in addition to her full-time gig of managing all the logistics of their home life with kids in different schools, meals, cleaning, chores, and so on. It’s a lot.
We were talking recently about the Sabbath, and she expressed what so many people today feel when considering the Sabbath. She desperately wants it, and even needs it, but with life full to the brim and overflowing, if she attempted it, the other days would become so full that she would either collapse exhausted into Sabbath each week, or never truly be able to rest knowing what insanity awaited her as soon as Sabbath ended.
Perhaps you can relate to my sister. Whether you’re a parent, a grandparent, or single; whether you’re a college student, a grad student, or a pastor, I imagine you often feel like life is so full there simply isn’t room to block off twenty-four hours on your calendar without creating a cascade of chaos on the remaining days that will erase whatever rest you found on the Sabbath.
Herein lies both the reality and the problem. My sister is right. She doesn’t have time for Sabbath. Just like you don’t.
Why Sabbath Practice Feels Impossible Yet Essential
However, the uncomfortable truth is that the only way any of us can fully experience the gifts of Sabbath is to stop trying to fit it into our lives. Sabbath isn’t designed to “fit” into our lives; it is designed to take over our lives—in the best way imaginable. But our lives are not designed with the Sabbath in mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. The cultural, political, philosophical, and economic forces that shape our lives and our choices are forming us in ways opposed to the Sabbath, which makes it very hard to rest. The irony of contemporary Sabbath practice is that rest is really hard work.
The Hebrew verb shavat, from which the noun shabbat is formed, means “to cease, stop.” Stopping in a culture obsessed with speed, advancement, ambition, productivity, and unrestrained growth is a deeply countercultural choice. Stopping is hard work. That’s why it is called a practice.
To call Sabbath a practice is to do more than acknowledge its countercultural character. When we engage the Sabbath, we are engaging our purpose as human beings, created in God’s image, and kin of all creation. To take Sabbath seriously is to explore the whole of your life in its illumination. Sabbath is the most ancient of all spiritual practices, woven into the fabric of creation. We tend to reduce spiritual practices to “doing devotions,” essentially a ten-minute add-on to life that we squeeze in wherever we can make it fit. But Sabbath is not an add-on to life; it is life’s core organizing principle. It is the center to which the rest of life is tethered, the center around which it revolves to find balance.
To walk the Sabbath way is to fall headlong into transformation. It is to invite disruption. It begins by losing our way, since the way by which we have come is what Psalm 1 calls a perishing path. It is to embrace the truth that only what is lost can be found, so we must lose our way before we can find the Sabbath way. This process of disorientation and reorientation will not happen overnight or on accident. Rather, it requires time, intentionality, and consistency.
Steps to Embrace a Sabbath Practice in Your Life
Time. Traditionally, a Sabbath lasts for twenty-four hours, although there is also a Jewish practice I love that extends Sabbath an extra hour, making it a twenty-five-hour day. This playful practice affirms the Sabbath as an anticipation of eternity and the life to come. Either way, Sabbath requires time. A full day is important because it often takes several hours to slow down enough internally to become present. But if that seems impossible, start by giving Sabbath what time you have and go from there.
The gifts of a Sabbath practice unfold over a lifetime. The Sabbath is not like Thanos, the great purple villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It can’t snap its fingers and make your life serene. And you aren’t Thanos either. You can’t snap your fingers and make your Sabbath perfect or use it to make all your problems go away. Real, lasting change happens slowly, over time. It requires intention, humility, and a sense of play—being willing to fail and try again next week. Sabbath apprentices us in the ways of delight, wonder, and gratitude over the course of our lives. Our primary responsibility each week is to make the space and show up to it.
Intentionality. Sabbath practice requires intentionality because the space will not make itself. In the Bible, Sabbath time is holy time, time that is set apart from the linear, production-oriented time of our workaday lives. It takes intentionality to set this time apart.
This can be done simply by establishing a threshold ritual that marks the transition from “regular time” to “Sabbath time.” Traditionally, this is done by lighting candles, saying a prayer or blessing, or singing a song. My wife and I keep Sabbath decorations in storage during the week, and part of our threshold ritual is setting out our Sabbath plate, candles, and handmade pottery on a handmade towel. The act of setting it up indicates that Sabbath is here. Seeing the beautiful items on display throughout the day reminds us what time it is.
It also takes intentionality to show up differently to Sabbath time than to the habituated ways we’re accustomed to living. Sabbath time is slow time. It’s about being present here and now. It’s unproductive and inefficient time. It takes effort to show up in these ways. It takes effort to keep the noise of the rest of life from creeping in and taking over—whether it’s the buzzing phone or the mental buzz of next week’s to-do lists.
Consistency. As a spiritual practice, Sabbath is not intended to be a one-off thing we enjoy here and there on a whim or when we have time. It is not an appendage to life, but the beating heart of life, providing energy, support, and nourishment to the whole “body” of our life. Built on the pattern of God’s practice in Creation, Sabbath establishes the rhythm by which our days are lived.
When we set aside time with intention and consistency, we make room in our lives for the fruit of Sabbath to grow. Above all, the Sabbath helps us to see and believe in a world that is alive with God’s presence. Not only just to see, but also to train our hands to feel, our ears to hear, and our hearts to sense where God is and what God is doing, so that we might find life-affirming ways of joining in God’s project of repairing the world.
Adapted from The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight by Travis West, releasing in June 2025.
