dailydatewithgod

I am not sure if you can relate but it is sometimes hard for me to slow down.  I mean literally.  I will catch myself walking down the hall at work in a hurried fashion for no reason at all. Yet when I do I am able to breath better through my steps.  I think my body actually enjoys it more. But life is one thing after the next and there is not much time to even slow down let alone rest.  I love naps but I do not live in a culture that values rest.  Perhaps it is the consumerism.  Perhaps it is the fear of missing out.  Perhaps it is interest in so many things and so many people. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  Perhaps it matters little why rest is not valued.  I don’t think God calls on us to evaluate the reasons for why we do what we do as much as the ability to choose if what we do resonates with our inner core and allows us to grow in love.  When you look at Hebrew story of creation, there is this remarkable thing that God does after creating like crazy for six days.  God rests.  It made me wonder when I read it.  Why would God need to rest?  I mean, God is all-powerful and created the concept of rest, but why is God taking the time to rest?  Perhaps (there I go again) God was attempting to model something for us.  We can grow, change, create, start new, destroy, transition and keep going, or we can stop along the way and rest.  God invites us into times of rest maybe not on a set schedule but the mechanism appears to be built-in.  We can go and push ourselves to the brink of death if we want but unless we take some time to stop and let it sink in, what’s the point? If we never have time to rest and enjoy our creations just as God did, did they really serve a purpose in our growth.   Rest allows for breath.  God invites us to not just do, but live.  Living involves time for everything.  I am not the moral failure my mind tells me I am being because I choose to rest and breathe it in.   Sometimes the simplest prayer I can say is “God, help me to remember I am a human being, not a human doing.“