Where’s the Rest?

Last week was busy around our house. I’m sure you can relate to that. Activities, meetings, work and the responsibilities of everyday life seemed to take up every spare minute in the week. We were looking forward to a long Memorial Day weekend and hopefully an extra day to relax.

While I would classify the weekend as extremely fun, it was not necessarily relaxing. We enjoyed spending time with family and working on projects at our cabin, but when I got home I found myself exhausted.

We had experienced a strange weekend to say the least. Let me give you a brief recap. On our way up to the cabin (my husband’s first time pulling a trailer or boat) the boat cover flew off and we quickly needed to shift everything from the boat to our already full cars. We had to pull off to the side of a two-lane road with no shoulder and my heart raced as cars whizzed dangerously close. Did I mention it was raining?

The next day our brother-in-law helped us get the boat in the water, helped us figure out how to work the boat lift and helped us fix the boat cover that broke the night before. We were beyond excited to take the boat for a spin, so we loaded into the boat headed out on the water. The engine sputtered, but we kept going. We weren’t going to let a little sputtering ruin our first boat ride! Within minutes, we felt the boat hit something (we found out later it was a sunken island) and shredded our prop. Soon we were loading the boat back on the trailer and heading for the repair shop.

Ahhhh. Finally it was Sunday! We could go to church and fellowship with other believers. However, as we pulled into the church parking lot, we noticed something was wrong. The parking lot was full, but no one was milling around. As we entered the church we were surprised to see the pastor giving already giving the sermon. I looked at my bulletin and realized that this was the week that the time of service changed to half an hour earlier, which meant we were very late.

When I was reading my devotions this week, I realized why I came home so tired out from the weekend. It was not because of these situations I just mentioned – they are actually pretty funny now that I think back. I was tired because I didn’t take time to rest. In Exodus 20, God told the Israelites that they should work for six days and on the seventh they should rest. God followed this example when He created the world. He created the world in six days and on the seventh He rested.

God knew what He was doing when He created us. He didn’t create our bodies to go, go, go and never take a break. He created us to work hard and then take time away from work to regain our strength and focus on Him. I can see now that I wasn’t following God’s plan for my week. Sometimes we may even need to schedule rest into our week. If we don’t take time out of our week to dedicate to the Lord and give our bodies a break, God may ask us, “Where’s the rest?”

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-21

Prayer: Dear God, when You created the world. You set the example of how to work hard and how to rest. You want us to dedicate time out of each week to spend with You. We want to follow Your example and give our bodies time to relax and recuperate from the work week. Please forgive us for the times when we don’t follow this plan and overextend ourselves. Thank you for setting the example of how our weeks should look.