Difficult Seasons

I took a Sabbath today –  a day of rest, a day of re-creation, a day of not doing things I had to do or needed to do.

I don’t do that often enough for my own good.  And as a result I pay the price.

The God who created us knows us better than we know ourselves.  He told his people Israel to take a Sabbath weekly.  And he gave them regulations about how to spend the day.

While we’re not bound by the regulations of the Jewish law, we’re foolish if we don’t learn from it.  For some reason, Sabbath is one of the things we’ve generally chosen to forget, to not learn from.

So we go and go until we drop.  Until the stress builds to the breaking point.  Then we crash.

God’s idea is simply better.  Once a week spend a day of refreshment, of re-creation.  You’ll stay charged up.  You won’t crash.

I had one of those crashes last week.  A migraine that came on Wednesday morning, that came back Wednesday night, that bounced back mid-day Thursday, and left me feeling like I’d been run over by a truck through the weekend.  Migraines are my body’s way of reminding me that I’m not resting and recharging.

So today I took that Sabbath, and I’m again resolving to do so weekly.

So what did I do today?  I went to Houston Camera Exchange, an old fashioned camera store where a knowledgeable person waits on you, puts functioning equipment in your hands to try out, and even tests the stuff you buy to make sure it is working before you leave the store.  I bought a new lens for my birthday, and spent the rest of the afternoon taking photos.  Recharging, re-creating stuff.

If you’d like to do some enjoyable reading about Sabbath, get a copy of The Rest of God by Mark Buchannan.  I’ll be rereading it soon myself.

Tags: migraine, Sabbath

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Chaplaincy and Pastoral Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.