Sometimes I feel like the Energizer Bunny on a carousel.
I just keep going and going around in a circle until I stop and throw up with motion sickness.
Somewhere along the line I got this idea in my head that a full life means I can’t stop. There is so much that needs to be done in this world that if I stop I obviously am not fulfilling my task. Something is left undone.
Recently God has been dealing with me on this subject and here is what I have learned.
First of all, when God came down to Mt. Sinai and gave Moses the top ten rules for his people, the top ten things that He thought were most important in the upbringing of His people, remembering the Sabbath day was number 5. In a list that condemns murderers, liars, and adulterers we find that we also are condemned for not taking a break.
God himself created everything and then paused.
In Exodus 23:10-12 we find that the Israelites were instructed to plow and harvest their fields for six years and in the seventh year they were instructed to, get this, STOP.
Leave you field un-plowed; go ahead and sleep in because you don’t have to work in the morning. Go take a year off.
For some of us the idea of taking a year off from work or school may sound appealing until you think it through. What is connected to your job?- DING DING DING we have a winner- your paycheck. The Israelites had to worry about their food.
They had to say “Well God we trust that you have provided enough for us from the past 6 years that we are just going to take a whole year off and know that if we don’t have enough food in store by the end of the year you will provide because by then it will be too late.”
Wow.
What I have found is that when I don’t take a break, I take a hit. When I am exhausted and over worked by life I loose efficiency. Things tick me off that a week a go would have had no affect on me. I jump at fewer opportunities to do what God says and jump at more opportunities to sleep or think about something absolutely mindless.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do you?
One of the strangest things I have found in being a long distance runner is that the pain and fatigue of a run attack worse when you stop running then when you are actually running. Your body can go forever until you have to bend over and retie you shoes and find you can’t get back up.
I think this is why I am afraid of stopping- that I will loose some hidden momentum and have to start from scratch. What I fail to realize is that by not stopping, I am loosing that momentum. If I never stop, I will never know if I am heading the wrong direction until I get where I am going and realize I need to turn around and by then I will be too tired to care.
“Remembering the Sabbath,” in my opinion, does not mean that every Sunday must be lazy, as for most ministers Sunday has to be the busiest day of the week. It means that sometimes it is required to just stop. To be still and know that He is God. Even the Energizer Bunny has to stop eventually.
I’m going to go take a nap now.
