Whenever I go on vacation, I am always aware of how lucky I am to have paid vacation: to be able to leave responsibilities and sometimes even my home and go someplace beautiful and do almost whatever I want. I'm grateful to have a job that provides that paid vacation as well as the people who step forward to take on some of my duties while I am gone.

Because priests typically move far from home for their vocation, vacation can turn into a time of visit after visit, which can seem like work, too, if one does it too much. So I tried to find a balance between resting and visiting. I opted for rest a LOT.

It reminded me how important Sabbath time is for all of us. We are studying the Book of Genesis in our Wednesday evening Bible study, and I was struck again by the first creation account in Chapter 1, in which God rested on the seventh day. The idea of the all-Powerful and all-Knowing resting is odd. Why would the authors think that God needs to rest?

But then I realized that the authors really meant that we need to rest, and so God models it. Maybe there are ways in which God rests, and maybe not. (Sometimes, I admit, I wonder if God is napping right now....) On the other hand, we all know how ragged we feel with little sleep or no time off from duties, and we know how energized we feel by an abundance of rest and freedom from regular responsibilities

Not everyone has the ability to stop work or to get away. There are young mouths to feed, projects to complete for work, online school.... Still, we need to get good at finding ways to rest, even if for short windows of time. If God gets to do it, so do we. I hope you find some Sabbath time this week.