I confess that I’m increasingly learning about the stress I live under – primarily due to my choice to be continually busy. Health issues over this past year have forced me to slow down, and I’ve spent some time learning from others who’ve written about similar issues. Maybe these quotes will challenge you as they’ve stretched me (including the ones I’m not yet sure I agree with fully):
- “Show me your sleep patterns and I’ll show you your theology. For example, if we pride ourselves on sleeping only five hours a night, we preach the following truths:
- I don’t trust God with my work, my church, or my family . . .
- I don’t respect how my Creator has made me . . .
- I don’t believe that the soul and the body are linked . . .
- I don’t need to demonstrate my rest in Christ . . .
- I worship idols.
David Murray, ReSet (2017), pp. 54-55
- “Remembering that technology is responsible for much of our time famine, it is good to go on strike occasionally. Try disconnecting from clocks, watches, alarms, beepers, telephones, and e-mail for a day, a weekend, or a week. Find the off switch. Don’t answer the telephone. Stop giving people the number to your cell phone and instead use it to make calls rather than receive calls.”
Richard Swenson, Margin (2004), p. 125
- “The weekly habits [include] one hour of conversation with a friend. . . . The usual life in America leans toward busying yourself with things that seem urgent, but friendships will never seem urgent. The most important things never are until it’s too late. The Common Rule habit of a weekly hour of conversation is aimed directly at that struggle. The idea is to cultivate a keystone habit of being the vulnerable, relational person you were created to be, even when life becomes complicated. . . . To cultivate the practice of a weekly hour of conversation is to keep the fire burning. It is to look out into a cold and dark world and to offer some light, some warmth, and a place to sit and talk.”
Justin Earley, The Common Rule (2019), pp. 26, 105, 108
- “Sabbath is like receiving the gift of a heavy snow day every week. Stores are closed. Roads are impassable. Suddenly you have the gift of a day to do whatever you want. . . . And if you begin to practice stopping, resting, delighting, and contemplating for one twenty-four-hour period each week, you will soon find your other six days becoming infused with those same qualities.”
Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (2017), p. 160
Wow! This is so timely and good. Thank you for this.
Sabbath is elusive to me.