Have you ever been around a child that is exhausted but refuses to sleep? You tell the child that they need to sleep, but they think that's a terrible idea and have other proposals about how to spend the time. It's often a completely ridiculous conversation that ends when they collapse into sleep.
I think that's sometimes how God looks at us. God knows we need rest, but we're convinced that we instead need to cram a 27th thing into our day. We hustle from one thing to the next, each one exhausting to the body, mind, and soul, but there's a sense of urgency that drives us. Maybe we're trying to prove a point to ourselves, or to others, but either way, we keep going despite our exhaustion. In modern culture, it's a point of bragging as to how exhausted we are.
God knows we need rest. God built a Sabbath into the week and told us to rest. When God was miraculously feeding the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness, God had them collect twice as much manna on one day so they wouldn't have to go and collect on the Sabbath. Some of them went anyway. God sighs, and tells them to rest.
God sighs, and tells us to rest. Find some rest for your weary soul. You're not holding up the world. We can stop for a few minutes. Breathe. Remember that it depends on God, which is a far better thing for the world to depend on than our efforts! We were made to rest in God. Let us create space in our lives for our souls to rest in God.
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