This is the second year I’ve taken the month of January off from posting to the blog. For the last few years, I’ve tried to maintain a consistent schedule for posts: a new essay each Monday and a new poem each Friday. This keeps me in the rhythm of writing each week, the deadlines acting as accountability to sit and reflect. I’ve grown much over the years as I’ve taken time away from my other responsibilities each week to simply write about what God seems to be doing in and around me. In this way, writing is a sort of rest, a break from the weekly routine to think and to feel a bit more deeply about the present journey.

But I’ve noticed that an annual break helps to refresh my mind and heart for a new year of writing. At times, the writing that often promises rest becomes a burden, just one more responsibility to complete before the week is over. So I decided to start taking some time off on occasion. I still write during my month off (mostly poetry, rarely prose), but I do so not for a deadline but simply for the joy of writing. I reflect a bit more freely, knowing I have time to polish a piece before the words will be seen (if they ever make a public appearance). I don’t keep a schedule for writing or work too hard to finish anything. I write when I have time and when I feel so inclined, and I don’t worry if I go a few days without putting words on paper. In this way, not writing is a sort of rest.

This approach to writing somewhat parallels my current relationship with work and with rest in general. Each week, I work to manage a number of responsibilities. Each week brings new lessons to prepare, new readings to complete, new assignments to grade. I used to approach every day as an opportunity to get work done, to strive for progress in the tasks set before me. But after a year or two of this approach, I learned the importance of rest, of trusting in the Lord more than I trust in my own abilities. I started taking a day off of school and work, practicing Sabbath rest, and I noticed my life change for the better. I felt more rested and less stressed, and I found I was more productive than I’d been in a life of nonstop effort.

In recent months, however, I’ve noticed my times of rest growing stale. As I’ve reflected, I’ve come to see that I haven’t been resting in the Lord as much as I’ve been simply stopping from effort and turning my mind and heart off for the day. I may have enjoyed spending days off in front of a tv, but I started to recognize that doing so left me feeling still drained. True, I wasn’t working, but I wasn’t really resting in the Lord either; I just wasn’t doing anything.

I’m trying to learn how to rest, and I’m finding that it’s not as simple as merely ceasing from weekly activities. Rather, true rest is found in turning my mind and heart to the one who sustains me, the one whose power is made perfect in weakness. I feel more rested after an afternoon of reading Scripture or books about the Lord than I do after an afternoon of video games or tv shows. I find more peace in a few hours of creative writing and reflection on the Lord’s work than in a few hours of inactivity. I get away and seek the Lord in solitude, finding comfort with him there. I still enjoy entertainment and fellowship and breaks from activity, but I’m learning to make those things peripheral rather than primary on my days of rest. And I’m making these choices not to seek some self-righteous status but because I’m coming to see more and more how much my life and well-being depend on the Lord.

I’m not good at resting yet, but I think I’m growing, and I’m praying for grace to rest well and to work hard, keeping both in their proper place. The Lord is good and faithful, and he’s given me sweet seasons of rest as well as strength sufficient for the work. As I learn to trust him more and more for these things, I pray that I’d be faithful to him in all of it, that he would be pleased.

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