Travel and need of a Sabbath….

So, this year has taken me many places, Perú, Panamá twice, Ecuador, and now I’m leaving in a week for the Pineridge Reservation in South Dakota.  But I notice one thing with all this travel, although I love it and thoroughly enjoy it, and love seeing people come to a new understanding of God, afterwards it leaves me tiered.   I get a little bit of time off after each trip, but I’m normally so hurried into my next project, that even if I take it, I am doing a crazy amount of other things to get prepared for it, and never really rest.  And I keep getting more tiered and more tired, and it is finally hitting me.  After spending two months in Peru, one month in Panama, and one in Ecuador, not to mention all the time in airports and planes, I have missed quite a few Sabbaths.

I can now here my teacher Mr. Miles voice ringing in my ear, as he would quote Exodus 20:8-11 
 ”Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
He would say, “I can remember back when I was a kid growing up in rural Nebraska, and if you wanted to go somewhere on Sunday, you would have to make sure your car was filled up with gas on Saturday, because the gas stations were closed on Sunday.  If you wanted to eat on Sunday, you better have went to the store on Saturday, because it was closed on Sunday.”  He would then continue on about explaining how our bodies cannot function going seven days a week, and that we need to rest, or it brings health problems and emotional problems.  He would say that God did, and we are to be imitators of God, so to live the holy lifestyle is also to live a lifestyle that rests when it should.

Sunday after church seems like the best time to get all those little projects and things I need to get done before the week starts, but then the work weeks starts and I feel like I didn’t have any time off, and am just constantly doing something, never-resting, getting a little more tired every week, and the more tired I am the lest motivation I have to push on in my work, to write, to stay in touch with people I should, until I just find myself cacooning up in my room.  Surviving, definitely not thriving.

So, I’m going to be taking this commandment a little more seriously from now on.  Because it is like my mother and father always told me when I was cranky or irritable, “Looks like someone needs some rest and should go to bed early…”  I would harshly deny it, but it is true.  If I plan to do this long-term, I need to start right now making it a practice and a discipline to take my Sabbath, or I will truly burn out.   And it isn’t going to mean one day of the week I just spend all day in my pj’s and never get out of bed, no, because as I hear and am responding to this call to take the Sabbath, it is not just a call to be quiet and rest my body, but a time to rest my soul in the presence of my Heavenly Father, and to spend time with Him.  To honor Him. 

Now, I’m going to start doing this, but it is definitely baby steps to this, because I’m not going to be going the route of the Jews and having a set number of steps I can take in one day, or miles I can drive, no, that doesn’t sound like rest, I’m gonna start by spending time with God, and see where my Sabbath goes from there.  Sounds pretty fun, eh?

Blessings!