Practice Instead of Doctrine as a Way to God

From Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase:

As I worked on the scripts, I was entering more and more deeply into a Jewish perspective. ... This truly was a religion of doing rather than believing, and the discipline of living according to the Law was, I could see, very similar to our observance of the rule in the convent. Or rather, in both cases, the ideal was the same.

The 613 commandments of the Law brought God into the minutiae of daily life, whether one was eating, drinking, cooking, working, or making love. No activity, no mater how mundane, was without religious potential. Each was what Christians called a sacrament: it was an opportunity to encounter the divine, moment to moment. Each time a Jew observed one of the commandments (mitzvoth), he or she was turning toward God, giving daily life a sacred orientation.

Certainly the Law could seem oppressive. .... But the Law could also bring joy. This was clear in the psalms that described the Law as luminous and liberating. ...

(Paragraphing edited for readability.) Cf. this posting (quoting RealLivePreacher: "faith is something you do, not something you think") and this one (quoting Frank Tibolt: action generates inspiration, not necessarily vice versa).