According to the Old Testament, God made the world in six days, and stopped on the seventh to rest and admire his work, so we, too, stop our normal routine to enjoy the home we are working so hard to create. This day of rest doesn’t mean simply refraining from “work,” it includes prohibitions against writing, cooking and electricity. We prepare food in advance, put away our phones, pack up the crayons, turn off our screens and leave our cars parked in the garage.

Basically, we set aside one day every week as a day to turn off the outside world’s noise. And that means we have only six days to fit in a week’s worth of all of the normal errands and chores required of a modern home.

Soon after I light the candles, we set the table with our fancy dishes, put out the wine glasses and walk our dog. (These are chores still allowed on Shabbat.) Then, finally, we gather around the dining room table. My husband, Leron, and I look at each other and we take a collective breath and exhale.

Out with that breath goes the stress of a long week of work and the commotion of a busy family: the unrelenting weekly routine, the scheduling and preparing and endless to-dos. We have made it to another Friday night. For the next day the world around us will slow. We will stay in pajamas until after breakfast, linger over meals with neighbors, take naps, read books on our cozy couch, play games as a family or maybe take a walk outside if it’s not too cold. But everything else will have to wait; if it wasn’t already done, it won’t be done today.

Image Credit... iStock

In the summer, when sunset occurs after my children’s normal dinnertime, Fridays can feel like most other days of the week. Leron and I work full days, and we still have a generous window between work and sunset to set up our home for the Sabbath. This means setting timers on our lights, grabbing the stroller from our car, turning off the lights in our fridge, plugging in a warming tray to heat the food I’ve cooked in advance and anything else we need to do before sunset. If we forget to get the stroller out of the car, for example, we’ll just do without it — we won’t open the car door during Shabbat because the lights inside the car would go on.