As a teacher, I must endorse the importance of rest. It is the one element in my entire week that will get me through the stressful and dark days that are upon us in the education world. Teachers are tired, overwhelmed, and frustrated. That’s just one part of our society. I can only imagine how those in the medical field are doing. I can only imagine how people who own their own businesses are overworked because they do not have enough employees, or they had to lessen the number of employees so they could break even financially. The last two years have taken a toll on all of us. As much as we all need encouraging words, we all must take time to rest.
I love exploring and leaving the house to go to a coffee shop to write or to a mall to just walk around it and look at all the items I’m not going to buy, but recently I have discovered the beauty of staying home. I’m exhausted. Everyone is. People make all kinds of excuses of why they cannot stop and rest. I know because I have made those excuses. I like how a friend says it. “Excuses are like butts. We all have them and they all stink.” We must stop making excuses and take the time to stop and rest.
There are demands from our family, from our jobs, from our churches, from our relationships, and from our own goals. Sometimes, we just have to say, “No.” That word is the most difficult word to say in the English language, but it is necessary and powerful. We must say “No” even to demands in our life that other people put on us and believe are urgent. I have discovered that if their demands are so urgent, and I don’t do them, they will find a way to get their own demands completed.
Without rest, we can destroy relationships. We are not healthy emotionally and we are super sensitive to what everyone is saying. Have we noticed that everyone around us in our society today are super sensitive to the words that people are saying? It’s because we lack rest and are not thinking logically or with any kind of grace that no one on this planet has perfect speech all the time. We must give grace when others misuse their words. When we have rest, it’s easier to give grace because we have a healthy mind that is rested.
Without rest, we can destroy ourselves mentally. We can make major mistakes in our lives with our careers, family, or any other part of our lives that requires any cerebral time. When we receive a consequence for our mistake, we either breakdown or blame others for what was done. Without rest, our responses to consequences may not be healthy. The one response would be to get more rest. We don’t want to do that because we believe that we are so valuable to everyone around us that we cannot stop and rest. The truth is without rest, we lessen as a human because we are not mentally, emotionally, or spiritually strong, and we lose our value.
Without rest, we are destroying our spiritual lives. Jesus took time to rest. He walked away from the crowds and took time to be with His Father. So many times, when I was working in the church, I would hear fellow pastors tell me that God’s work is never done, so we cannot take time to rest. Are they better than Jesus? They were wrong. God can get the work done without us if he chooses. He chose us to do His work, but he wants us to do His work well, and the only way we can accomplish that is to be well rested. We must take time to spend with Jesus as we rest in Him. We must take time to sleep and let him take care of our bodies, so that we can serve Him and do His work that so urgently needs to be done.
Without rest, we struggle physically. I have had to learn this one the hard way. I am naturally a night owl. I can create some of my best work late into the wee hours of the darkness of night, but as a teacher, those hours are not afforded to me. I have learned that one of the best ways to lose weight and be physically healthy is to rest. When I have been sick, I can reflect and see that many times it was because I did not take care of myself and get proper rest.
There are demands on all of us. People want us there for them every second of their lives. Even if we are taking care of babies, we must find a way to rest with them. Our rest can be a nap, getting to bed earlier, reading a book, listening to music, or whatever it is that calms us and allows us to rest. It may not be a long rest, but any small amount will help. We can also ask others to help us so that we can rest. The world around us is hectic. Jesus walked away and rested. We must give ourselves permission to do that. In the wise words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Let’s stop and look around. Life is too short to miss it.
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