rest

As kids head back to school, it's important to protect their right to rest and practice the Sabbath.

If you doubt the importance of Sabbath, just run a quick Google search for terms like “exhaustion” or “burnout” or the various mental disorders that accompany the habits of our society. This is what crashing back down to earth looks like for a society. It’s a recurring blight on our culture. We must gain an appreciation for God’s gift of the Sabbath. We need to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God has written down what we need for genuine human flourishing and built it into the actual fabric of the created order.

The ultimate solution to the existential alienation that plagues us is to seek healing not from ourselves, others, or our broken culture, but from the God who loves us. To be sure, he uses counselors and therapists as agents of healing, but our greatest need is for intimacy with him.

Expending energy has a time and a very important place in our lives—we were created to work. But we were also created to rest. The problem for many is that they never stop and rest.

Amid these trying times, let’s take more seriously the practices proposed by Lent and rest our bodies to protect others from harm, purifying our hearts and minds as worship to God.

Although this new simple at-home lifestyle amid the coronavirus pandemic is largely counter-cultural, it aligns with a fascinating Dutch discipline that has numerous proven benefits from which I believe we can grow during this pandemic if we allow ourselves to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.