Slow Down this Year?

My bride and I enjoyed a few days of rest before and after New Year’s Day. I sincerely enjoyed it. Being able to recharge was a refreshing luxury in our lives. I thought, “This is nice! We should be more intentional to take time for rest and relaxation.”

This week I am back in my study at church. Among other things, I am preparing to teach a course on disciple-making. In doing so, I am reading and researching several resources, some are familiar and others are relatively new to me. In the midst of this process, there is a theme that has arisen…rest. We, in the world full of hurry, produce, and win, there is the word…rest. Although believers are to produce fruit, we are to have times of rest and growth. I am reminded that upon creating man, God rested, and on man’s first full day of existence, he rested, too. Sabbath rest. Blessed rest.

Hauntingly, this morning one of my friends’ blog was built around the theme of slowing down for 2023. While I rested last week I ran across Youtube videos on the trend called Slow Living. I even watched a few of them. As I prepare to teach others, do you think the Lord may be trying to tell me something? Within my research and my daily life, the theme that has most poignantly stricken me is this – slow down this year.

Back to work. My calendar for next week tells me that on top of normal work days, I have obligations or meetings each night Monday through Thursday. My habit is to work from 8am until whenever an evening meeting begins, then go home after the meeting ends. This means I work from 8am until 7 or 8pm on those nights. Next week there are four of those in a row and I have a 7am meeting one of those days. Is this slowing down? Nope, not yet. I tell myself I will avoid setting up weeks like that, from here forward, but I know my tendencies.

As I reconsider the situation I wonder if I can schedule time in the afternoons on days with evening meetings. I’ve done this before, but they generally become crowded by the “needs of the immediate” which I did not see ahead of time. Perhaps I should schedule them and stick to it. I may have the tenacity, but I do not have the track record.

In his book Building a Discipling Culture, Mike Breen writes, “God designed us to be productive. But we build our identities around our activities. We are not living in the truth of who God created us to be. We have become human ‘doings’ rather than human ‘beings.'” That statement rings true. How can we abide, really spend time with Christ, really rest and recharge, if we fail to slow down this year?

Can you relate to this problem? Does it ring true to you? Do you need to slow down in 2023? CAN you make yourself slow down? I know I have been doing it incorrectly. Can you relate? This year, (no resolutions, just intentions), I will seek to slow down, abide in Christ, recharge, and work from the strength gained from rest.

I welcome your thoughts. Share your intentions regarding rest, if you desire. May God give you peace and rest in this new year.

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