What I Learned from My Accidental Day Off

The other day I had a day off but it wasn’t a planned  day off, I’m referring to it as an accidental day off.  The thing is I really don’t take days off, I take vacations where I walk away from all my work, but I normally work every day of the week.  On my days off from my Job that pays the bills I normally work between 4 to 5 hours on church things.  But on this day I had planned on going to meetings, but do to an unforeseen 5 hours of talking to tech support I decided to skip the meeting and use the day to catch up on other work.  Autumn’s aunt was wanting to come over and see us so Autumn had told her this day would work.  We had to do some running around town in the morning nothing that big just had pick some odd and ends.  Once we got back I figured I would get some work done then when Autumn’s aunt got here I would take a break finish up later in the evening.  We got back home I sat on the couch and somehow completely forgot about all the work I wanted to do.  Autumn informed me her aunt was going to be later then excepted.  I remembered we had some movies on the DVR we wanted watch. Truth be told they have been there for months maybe some longer than a year.  I said let’s see what’s on the DVR, we started watching “The Intern,” which was a great movie.

At some point about half way through the movie a thought entered my mind, “so this is what it feels like to have a day off.”  Along with this piece of scripture, “On the seventh day, having finished his task, God rested from all his work.  And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from his work of creation.”(Gen 2:2-3)  As I had this thought accord to me I thought maybe God is trying to tell me something, you can ask Autumn I don’t forget about work and I don’t just relax all that easy when I have a list of things I want to get done.  I’m a bit more high strong then I should be.  I complained for almost two days about being on the phone for over five hours with tech support and how much I should have gotten done.  But I had forgotten how important a day of rest is for us.  God even commanded Israel that they are to take a day of rest.  Now Moses called a meeting of all the people and told them, “You must obey these instructions from the Lord. Each week, work for six days only. The seventh day is a day of total rest, a holy day that belongs to the Lord. Anyone who works on that day will die. Do not even light fires in your homes on that day.”(Ex 35:1-3)  As I began to realize I was no longer allowing myself to truly rest, I would come to a point of exhaustion push myself to go a little further, then I would collapse on the couch and just zone out.  I would come back from vacations feel rested for about a week and then be exhausted again.

I told Autumn I now realize that I need to take a day of rest, a day where I relax, a day where I do things with family or around the house that need to be done.  On this day I do not work on sermons, try to figure out what my next series is.  I am allowed to write my blog, record my YouTube show only because these are things that I can do and relax while doing them although I am going to do my best to have all my blogging done by day off.  I can work around on projects such as our yard and so on.  But I am going to train myself to relax and take a real day off a full day.  I’m going to learn to relax more and not worry about the work that is not yet done, let us not forget worrying is also a sin.  So I challenge you to Take a day off every six days and reenergize your body and your soul.  It is important to remember to make time for God on your day off as well.