16 Aug 2010
Taking a break is the most important work
Stop the world, its ok to step off
As I said yesterday we are very much looking forward to tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow we will pack the car, say goodbye to the dog and the rabbit and head to a shack on the East Coast of Tasmania.
I love holidays! Sometimes I wish every day could be a holiday!
The truth is though that I love my work. You don’t have to talk to many people who spend their time looking for work to realise how blessed you are to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Yesterday I began reflecting on the ‘Sabbath’, and there are a couple more thoughts I’d like to run past you.
I have found Eugene Peterson’s book “Christ plays in 10,000 places” very helpful. He spends a bit of time exploring the place of the Sabbath:
If there is no Sabbath – no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking – we soon become totally absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or marginalised. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easiest to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose the capacity to sing “This is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centred ditties about what we are doing and feeling.”
“…. I don’t see any way out of it: if we are going to live appropriately in the creation we must keep the Sabbath. We must stop running around long enough to see what he has done and is doing. We must shut up long enough to hear what he has said and is saying. All our ancestors agree that without silence and stillness there is no spirituality, no God-attentive, God-responsive life”.
I find Peterson’s words both helpful and challenging. Having a real day off, to ‘re-create’, is a form of structural faith. If I permit the world to continue without me for a minute, I am saying with my actions that I trust God enough that he doesn’t always need my help.
I know I am going to need to work hard to actually have a holiday. There is a conscious choice that I need to make if I am not simply going to “blob”, but actually ‘re-create’ and ‘re-connect’ with my family and God.
Have a great break you guys. Hope you can switch the brain off from its usual activity and be attuned to the things which will bring real refreshment.
“A refreshed soul can be a truly creative soul, and a truly creative soul is a productive soul.”
Di
August 16th, 2010 at 8:06 pmpermalink
Thanks Di, Appreciate it. Like the quote too..
Matt Garvin
August 16th, 2010 at 9:53 pmpermalink