Shabbos Queen

It often surprises me how people can exist without Shabbos. But if you never stop, you never realize you need to stop, or how could rest could be. If you watch a runner after he has finished a race, heaving and gasping for air, you wonder how he could have made it until then. But when running, you just keep going. And the finish line, that’s what keeps you going. Eyes on the prize. But sometimes with the inner pleasure of the challenge coming from the race, it is easy to forget that it is the finish line and the rest that is our end goal. Work does not make us free. Anyone who has ever lit Shabbos candles feels it - All of a sudden, things are silent. And what was then important and time pressing, which overtook your to do lists and worries, has no value anymore. Time no longer exists for practical purposes- once Shabbos begins, the purpose is for connection and unity- to yourself, to your family, to the Jewish people. Of great importance all of a sudden is eating, relaxing, laughing with others, and feeling one with creation. A Jew must laugh. And to laugh means to stop. To be utterly in the present. One spark, silence, and fufillment.