Day 6: Choosing Rest
Read it: Genesis 2:1-3, Job 3:26, Mark 1:35, Mark 6:31
Live it:
A lot of people are burned out and headed for a crash. We sleep less and are on the go more than ever before. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, “I have no peace! I have no quietness! I have no rest; only trouble comes” (Job 3:26).
Burnout comes when we have too much going on in our lives. Author and medical doctor Richard Swenson says, “The conditions of modern-day living devour margin. If you’re homeless, we direct you to a shelter. If you’re penniless, we offer you food stamps. If you’re breathless, we connect you to oxygen.”
“But if you’re marginless, we give you one more thing to do. Marginless is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were ten minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from a gas station, and you forgot your purse. That’s marginless.”
I’ll never forget the time I was flying on a plane with Brynea, and I was making a list of things I needed to do, but I was falling asleep. I started dreaming about Brynea bringing home a pet monkey that was causing havoc at our house, and while I was in and out of consciousness, I had written “feed monkeys” on my to-do list. I needed margin, and you may be in a place where you need margin in your life. When you’re not hurrying and worrying all the time, you have time to think. Time to relax. Time to enjoy life. Time to be still and know that God is God.
Ps James