Don't miss God's gift of rest
By Mark Buchanan

THE WORLD is not dying for another book. But it is dying for the rest of God.

I certainly was. I became a Sabbath-keeper the hard way: either that, or die. Not die literally - at least, I don't think so - but die in other ways. It happened subtly, over time; but I noticed at some point that the harder I worked, the less I accomplished. I was often a whirligig of motion. My days were intricately fitted together like the old game of Mousetrap, every piece precariously connected to every other, the things needing to work together for it to work at all. But there was little joy, and stunted fruit.

Obsessed To justify myself, I'd tell others I was gripped by a magnificent obsession. I was purpose-driven, I said, or words like that. It may have begun that way. It wasn't that way any longer. Often I was just obsessed, merely driven, no magnificence or purposefulness about it. I once went 40 days - an ominously biblical number, that - without taking a single day off. And was proud of it.

But things weren't right. Through my work often consumed me, I was losing my pleasure in it - and, for that matter, many other things besides - and losing, too, my effectiveness in it. And here's a secret: for all my busyness, I was increasingly slothful. the rest photo