Rest

"Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don't do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day." Exodus 20: 8-11 (The Message)

It's been a long while since my last post. This is partly because I find myself in the same place - of having very little to say to God - and partly because I've been busy. But God has not been quiet. Recently, I've felt quite challenged on the subject of rest.

Since August I've been developing a website. As is often the case it started as a list of tasks which progressed rapidly. Soon, however, various niggles appeared and the to-do list, far from diminishing, grew more rapidly than it shrank! As a result I have spent loads of time on the computer. Evenings. Mornings. Weekends. Sunday afternoons. Towards the end of this I became very weary and felt a prompted to keep the sabbath as a day of rest. Not complete inactivity, but something different. Something set apart.

This weekend I was away, but I deliberately didn't take my laptop. Instead of starting Sunday morning at the computer, I curled up in an armchair to read N T Wright's. Surprised by Hope. It was both relaxing, and immensely spiritually refreshing. Sometimes it seems we are responsible for our own dry spells.