My body feels like I’ve taken a beating.
I’m getting rest at night, but the days wear me slam out. Grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, meals, errands, Halloween Costumes, dentist visits, doctor visits, and ballgames. Then I crash before starting all over again the next day.
It’s tempting to think the busyness is simply due to the season I’m in; having school-aged children with all the activity and homework and running around that goes with them. But the truth is, every age brings it’s own variety of demands.
In high school it was yearbook deadlines, band practice, and decorating for the prom. In college, it was ministry events and papers and work.
Seminary. Young Married. Young Children. Each one different, but each one the same in that the expectations felt relentless.
The secret, I’ve discovered, is not to survive the gauntlet of exhausting events hoping and waiting for a quieter season of life. It doesn’t exist for most until just before death.
The secret is to force in times of stillness and rest. Walks in the woods and naps on cold winter days. Lingering in pajamas and staring out the window. A cup of coffee on the porch with a good book.
It’s a novel concept that God Almighty conceived Himself and labeled, “Sabbath Rest.”
All of life will attempt to convince us that we must go, do, acquire, meet needs, and exceed expectations without pause. And if we aren’t careful, we will become enslaved to working. Working for more, working for better, working for approval, and working for happiness.
Its true that God ordained six days for work. But then He ordered rest.
We need to practice the discipline of regular times to sit, be still, cease striving and know, remember, contemplate, realize, that He Is God. To recognize that he has provided all we work for. Everything we need He has promised to give.
We need repeated reminders that we are not the power behind the getting. He powerfully and lovingly gives.
So, today I will nap and stare out the window. Instead of calling and texting, I’ll just commune with Him. I will take time to watch the kids and really see how special he made them. And I’ll discipline my mind to ponder how great and capable He is at every little thing.
God can accomplish more through my day of rest than I can in a thousand days spent in tireless exertion.
He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Psalm 127:2
I needed to read this today. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in all the things we have to get done that we forget the need to make time to rest.
What a good reminder. It is amazing how low rest can get on our priority list when it was one of the first gifts God ever gave us in the sabbath.
Amen! Such a good reminder in this fast-paced culture!
Amen
Thank you for this reminder, especially in a season when I feel God calling me to get quiet in many ways. Rest. Psalm 127:2 for sure.
Thank you for reminding us to rest. It’s so important to force ourselves, as you say, to rest. It definitely feels like “forcing” since it’s so hard to make it a priority with all the other pressing things in our lives! We need it, though.