DEUT125 In my life, I am in danger of getting lost, deflected, and confused in the complex web of demands, responsibilities, and desires I carry with me. Shabbat is when and how I check the map. You would be right to see the honoring of Shabbat as an act of faith, since the source of its observance is God. "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because He abstained from all His work that God created to make," (Genesis/Bereshit 2:4) and "It will be a sign between me and the people of Israel forever, for in six days God made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day God abstained from work and rested" (Exodus/Sh'mot 31:17). To me, though, Shabbat observance is more the opposite, actually a pathway to faith. Although doing can arise out of faith, faith can also arise as a result of the doing. If I waited until God was more of a presence in my life to be convinced to observe the Sabbath, I would likely not get there. Because I observe shabbat, my faith grows. Although I am focusing here only on the spiritual hindrance that is busyness and its antidote, which is Shabbat, you need to ask yourself what it is that stands in the way of your opening to faith, and what you can do about it. There are many sorts of actions that can be undertaken as a result of faith, and that in the doing can also become a source of faith. This is true of the classic acts of love and kindness, like giving charity, visiting the sick, clothing the naked, and burying the dead. The same is true of prayer. It is logical to think that living a life by the Commandments would demand that faith be in place first; my experience is that living by the Commandments fosters and nurtures faith as well. In the end, what is important about faith is that you seek. The psalm says, "When You said, 'Seek My face,' my heart said to You,' I will seek Your face, Hashem'" (Psalms/Tehillim 27:8). And the Torah reassures: "From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him," though there are conditions: "If you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul" [this verse]. Rabbi Zev Brodie, who was the son of Rabbi Simcha Zissel, the Alter of Kelm, asked before his death that he be eulogized by only one person, and that the eulogy consist of only one tribute -- that "he had the desire to advance toward faith" ("Haya lo h'ratzon l'hitkarev l'emuah" -- Rabbi Dov Katz, Tenuat ha/Mussar (The Mussar Movement), vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Avraham Tsiyoni, 1967), 106.). We learn from this to emphasize the search for faith over the fruits of that search, yearning over finding. "The body needs air. What is the air of the soul? Faith."--Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, Lev Eliyahu, 3.