As far as possible, the world is not altered by our sojourn in it over Shabbat. Instead, we eat food we have already prepared, we talk, we sleep, we pray, we walk—simple, human things. And by these actions we resist our impulse to be constantly meddling with the world, altering it, making it conform more closely to our desires, as though our desires were all that mattered. Shabbat is simply to take our hands from the wheel and let it spin.
