“Many of us don’t realize that we are weary (and volatile) from holding so much in. Sabbath can be just the opportunity we need to stop working so hard at holding everything in and rest with God, even with the hard stuff. It takes courage to 'go there,' but God promises to be with us even in our lowest moments, and we will never know how God will meet us until we try. ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’ (Matthew 5:4).
“While we are on this earth we will always be moving in and out of feelings of loneliness, incompleteness, and being cut off from the union and communion we seek. That is a part of being human, and our awareness of this reality of the human condition may be more pronounced on the sabbath, again simply due to the lack of so many distractions. There is an exquisite little poem from Hafiz that beings with the words ‘Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly / Let it cut more deep.’ These lines are arresting precisely because they are so counterintuitive in a world where we would do almost anything to run from our loneliness. And yet the final lines of the poem offer us a way of actually embracing our loneliness in a spiritually productive way rather than running from it: 'Something missing in my heart tonight / Has made my eyes so soft / My voice so tender / My need of God absolutely clear.' ”
