Soul Friendship and the Sacred Rhythm of God’s Time

For the last four years, I have lived across the street from someone who has become one of my dearest friends. I have had the privilege of meeting three of his four children within hours of their birth. We have shared meals, watched each other’s children, taken each other out for birthdays, introduced one another to books and movies we love, and walked with each other through joy and sorrow.

This summer, he and his family moved down the street. They aren’t far—I can walk to their new house in about five minutes; I’ve timed it. And yet our street is feeling the ache of their departure. One of the things I have been most grateful for over these years is the gift of their presence—not abstract presence, but real, tangible presence. The kind that happens on front lawns and sidewalks. The kind that lingers.

Nearly every day, I could look out my window and see neighbors gathered in their yard—parents talking while children played, conversations sparked simply because someone was outside and available. That unhurried presence has done more to knit our neighborhood together than any organized effort ever could. They didn’t set out to build community. They simply walked out the front door and paid attention.

The other person in our neighborhood who has this innate ability is my own son. From the time we moved to Nashville when he was four years old, he would sit in our front yard and ask to pet every dog that walked by. And so he came to know their owners. I can’t count how many times I’ve met someone new in the neighborhood only to hear, “Oh, I know your son—I met him one day when I was walking my dog.” Presence, it turns out, is contagious. And it is how places become home.

We live, however, in a world ruled by the clock. Time is measured in deadlines, productivity, and efficiency. Days blur together, one rushing into the next, and we are left feeling fragmented and exhausted. In this rhythm, relationships suffer. Friendship becomes something we try to fit in, rather than something we shape our lives around.

But God’s time does not work that way. The sacred rhythms given in Scripture—Sabbath, feasts, seasons of rest and rejoicing—were meant to pull God’s people out of the tyranny of endless doing and back into the grace of being. They remind us that time is not simply something to manage or consume, but something to receive.

The Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, embodies this truth beautifully. Fifty days after Passover and the first fruits of spring, the people gathered to offer the early summer harvest with gratitude and to remember the gift of Torah—the shaping of a people in covenant with God and with one another. It was a feast of shared presence. A reminder that community, like the land, must be tended over time. That faithfulness unfolds slowly.

There is another feast that deepens this rhythm even further. At Christmas, we remember that God did not remain distant or abstract, but entered time itself. The eternal Word took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. God chose proximity. Vulnerability. Presence.

Christmas and its twelve-day feast are not simply a celebration of God coming into the world; they are a declaration of how God comes—quietly, locally, relationally. The One who gave sacred rhythms steps fully inside them. God joins us in the ordinary texture of human life: family, place, hunger, rest, companionship. The Incarnation is the ultimate act of soul friendship.

This is the heart of sacred time. Grace—the kind that heals and sustains—does not grow in isolation. It takes root in shared life. We were never meant to carry the weight of existence alone. Healing, strength, and joy emerge when we slow down enough to be present to one another, when we choose to dwell rather than rush, when we allow our lives to overlap in meaningful ways. This kind of grace cannot be manufactured or forced. It is received. And it grows best at a human pace.

When we align our lives with God’s time, we begin to notice one another again. We make room for listening, for meals, for silence, for joy. Our relationships become more connected, more resilient. Soul friendship is no longer squeezed into the margins of our lives, but becomes one of the ways we recognize God’s presence among us.

The sacred rhythm of God’s time is not meant to burden us with more obligations. It is meant to free us—from the lie that time is scarce, from the pressure to prove our worth through productivity, from the assumption that bigger is always better. It teaches us that there is enough when we live attentively, that abundance often looks like shared life rather than accumulation.

What might this look like for us now? It doesn’t need to be elaborate. It could be lighting a candle at dinner and letting the meal linger. It could be walking your street without headphones and noticing who is there. It could be setting aside time to listen—to God, to your own soul, to the people you love. It might be choosing presence over efficiency, attention over achievement.

Soul friendship cannot be rushed. It grows in rhythms of rest, gratitude, and intentional presence. It takes time. And that time, when received rather than consumed, becomes holy.

As this season unfolds, consider what sacred rhythm might already be waiting beneath the surface of your days. Where are you rushing past the presence of God? Who have you been too busy to see? What might change if you trusted that time itself is a gift?

Because this is what Christmas ultimately tells us: love comes close. God chooses nearness. And the kingdom of God takes root not in spectacle or speed, but in the slow, faithful presence of lives shared together.