The other night, without even realizing it, I found myself slipping my hand into my pocket during dinner and pulling out my phone. In the blink of an eye, I was scrolling through my emails as my family ate dinner, and just like that, I had checked out. I was there, physically, but my mind was in my work. A frustrated glance from my wife shook me back to reality, and I quickly put my phone back in my pocket.
It wasnāt so long ago that people left their work in the office. They said good night to their colleagues, got on a bus or a train, and left their work behind until the next workday. Today, unfortunately, work follows us wherever we go. We check our emails at night and on weekends, always feeling pressure to respond. There are no boundaries left. The digital world has erased the lines between work and rest, between public and private, between the sacred and mundane.
What’s the result? Broken relationships. Rising anxiety. Collapsing attention spans. A nagging sense that despite all our connectivity, something vital has been lost. We can’t concentrate on anything meaningful because the next notification is always coming. We’re drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The technologies promised to free us have instead become our masters.
Where can we find shelter from this relentless storm? How do we reclaim the sacred space needed for our souls to breathe?
The Hassidic Jews tell a parable: In Eastern Europe, an itinerant peddler trudged through snowy forests selling his meager wares from village to village. One evening, the sky darkened unexpectedly as a winter storm erupted. Swirling snow obscured the paths, and howling winds disoriented him completely. As night fell, the peddler stumbled forward hopelessly. His fingers and toes grew numb. His cheeks burned red with frost. Each step became more difficult than the last.
Suddenly, in the distance, he spotted a shimmering light. With his last reserves of strength, he fought through snowdrifts toward the light. It led him to a traveler’s inn where he found warmth by the fire, hot food for his empty stomach, and a bed for his exhausted body.
Come morning, refreshed and reoriented, the innkeeper provided clear directions. The peddler stepped back into the forestānot as a lost soul on the verge of death, but as a traveler who knew exactly where he was headed.
This parable holds the answer to our question. We are that peddler. Life’s journey through the material world is that storm-ravaged forest. The demands of work, technology, and endless consumption are the bitter winds and disorienting snow that cause us to lose our way. When we forget our purpose and surrender to the storm, our souls grow numb and begin to die.
The inn with its warming fire, nourishing food, and restful sleepāthis is Shabbat. It is the light that guides us when we’ve lost our way. It is the shelter that allows us to remember who we are and why we’re here.
After recounting the six days of creation, the Bible states:
God Himself stopped working on the seventh day, for true completion includes stopping. You can’t finish something if you never put it down. You can’t make anything holy without setting boundaries. And so God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He created a boundary in time, and that boundary itself became sacred.
The Hebrew word for nature is teva (×××¢). These exact same Hebrew letters can also spell the word for drowning. This is no coincidence. When we live without boundaries – when we allow the natural world with all its demands and distractions to dictate our lives – we literally drown spiritually. As Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter taught, “The natural world of desires and animal instincts drowns an individual.” Without Shabbat’s weekly boundary, we lose our spiritual bearings completely. We forget what we’re working for. We lose sight of our purpose. The endless current of activity pulls us under.
When Isaiah declared: “If you restrain your foot because of the Sabbath, from pursuing your affairs on My holy day… Then you shall delight in the LORD” (Isaiah 58:13-14), he expressed precisely this point: true freedom requires restraint. Real joy demands boundaries. By stopping our work – and putting away our phones – we create space for true relationships.
This is the revolutionary message our world desperately needs. Stop. Rest. Remember. Reconnect.
This is why I wrote Shabbat Revolution: A Practical Guide to Weekly Renewal. This book offers a roadmap for escaping the digital wilderness and rediscovering the inn where our souls can find warmth and direction. Drawing from thousands of years of wisdom, it provides practical guidance for creating sacred time in a boundary-less world.
In the words of Erick Stakelbeck, host of TBN’s Stakelbeck Tonight: “In today’s 24/7, chronically busy, phone-addicted world, putting aside the hustle, bustle, and distractions once a week to focus on God and family is a truly revolutionary act.”
The light from the inn still shines for us today. We need only the courage to follow it through the storm – and the sense to keep our phones in our pockets when we get there.
CLICK HERE to buy your copy of Shabbat Revolution: A Practical Guide to Weekly Renewal
