Stillness & Peace: We Need Time To Rest, Rehabilitate, Refresh

Have you ever begun a vacation with your insides racing? I remember thinking that I needed more time, that two weeks wasn’t enough. My first week of vacation was spent trying to adjust, to slow down, so I could enjoy my time off.

Decades ago my family relocated from bustling Dallas-Ft. Worth to a little town in Florida. We went through a similar adjustment. I didn’t realize at first how my life was so fast-paced. I was waiting at a traffic light in our little town that first week. It was one of only a dozen red lights. I was impatient, racing inside, eager for the light to change, wanting to get where I was going in a hurry, when I realized something. “There’s no need to be in a rush!” I wasn’t stuck on a freeway with thousands of cars. I was in line behind three pickup trucks with dog boxes and whip antennas.

It seems like the cycle of weekly life has sped up to a faster pace. With electronic devices taking over our lives, the busyness of the work week has consumed our weekends. There is no difference between a workday and a day of rest. In fact, “What day of rest?” It’s gone!

I remember a time when stores didn’t open on Sunday. This was to obey the “blue laws” or to respect a day when people went to church. Not that businesses feared the Lord, they didn’t. They weren’t like Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A. But they didn’t want to anger church-going customers. Their Sunday closures were a secular sabbath, a conventional observance, merely done for the sake of appearance.

How did we get modern two-day weekends? Where did that come from? At the beginning of our world, the Bible records a day when the Creator ceased from his work. This was the world’s first sabbath, a one-day pause, a day of rest.

Is a weekly day of rest necessary? Years ago, I read that a communist country (where they officially don’t believe in God, where the state has all the power, like China), attempted to increase production by having people work seven days a week. Instead of production going up, it went down. It seems human beings are not designed to labor non-stop. Just like we need to sleep at night, we need a weekly cessation from working. We need to rest, rehabilitate, to be refreshed in body and soul, and we need to spend time with our family.

In older agricultural times, before manufacturing plants and television shows, Saturday was a day off. It was a day to stop plowing and planting and harvesting. For Jews, creation rested to honor its Creator. Animals on the farm were allowed to rest. The land itself every so many years was allowed to rest. This seasonal cycle honored the day when God rested, the seventh day.

After our Savior came, traditions changed. Jesus the Christ was crucified on Friday. He lay in the tomb until Sunday, then rose from the dead that morning. For his followers in the nascent church, the day of his resurrection became the Day of the Lord, the day he defeated death. As the church grew among Gentiles, the believers were more inclined to celebrate the Lord’s Day rather than keep the Jewish sabbath. We now have both days, weekends.

We are all on an enforced sabbath, a Jubilee of sabbaths, ceasing from working. Can you set aside anxiety and embrace this peace? What blessings lie ahead from the Lord?

RON WOOD IS A RETIRED PASTOR AND AUTHOR. CONTACT HIM AT WOOD.STONE. RON@GMAIL.COM OR VISIT WWW.TOUCHEDBYGRACE.ORG OR FOLLOW HIM AT TOUCHED BY GRACE ON FACEBOOK. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.