I woke up about a week ago at 4:00am, wired awake by the sense that an ominous doom was hanging over me. I felt like my life was going to end, and that I desperately needed to do something about it. The only problem was that nothing was wrong.
It’s clear I was experiencing anxiety from working too much and resting too little. But I don’t just mean rest in the sense of “physical sleep.”
In Genesis, after God created the world and everything in it, he took a full day to rest with Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:2-3). This was the origin of the Sabbath. And they obviously weren’t sleeping all day long.
In the New Testament, Jesus said that man was not created for the Sabbath, but rather the Sabbath was created for man (Mark 2:27). It was, and always will be, a gift. Even before our fall into sin.
How much more, then, should we embrace a weekly rhythm of work and rest in our broken bodies? It should go without saying that we need rest. But the types of rest we make time for is important.
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