There is one last thing we need to cover here and that is the topic of rest. If you ever find yourself feeling guilty for taking a break, chances are awfully good that your priorities are out of whack. If you think everything will stop unless you keep going, you are desperately out of balance. Remember all the way back in Exodus, when God gave us the Ten Commandments? Do you remember the one where He said “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…” (Exodus 20:8-10A NIV) God did that on purpose. If you go further into the law you will see that the penalty for breaking the Sabbath in the Old Testament was death. Sounds like God takes Sabbath pretty seriously.
Now I don’t want to dwell on the legalism of the Sabbath. Jesus fought that enough in His earthly life and ministry. Jesus proved He was Lord of the Sabbath and more importantly that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. That last part is key. The Sabbath was made for you and me. A day of rest was planned in the order of the universe from week one, because the God who made us, knew we needed it. A good deal of Sabbath has to do with worship, but there is something more. Put very simply, it’s love. The God of the universe knew that if we were not ordered to take time off, we would find a way to fill every minute of our time. We would start to put other things in front of Him, destroy our relationship with Himself and work ourselves into an early grave. That is not at all what God desires for us.
The thing we all need to remember, in our quest to be enough, by doing enough and working enough, is that God is already enough and we can depend on Him in every aspect of our lives, This is huge and crucial. It means that it doesn’t all depend on us and that we can trust Him to keep going what needs to keep going while we give our bodies, as well as our minds and souls the rest that they need to function in God’s world.
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