Return of the Weekly Devotional

Scripture: Mark 1:35-39

Pastor's Note: The last devotional I did was on Holy Week. Knowing the intensity surrounding the celebration of our Lord's Resurrection, I figured that would suffice for two weeks: both Holy Week and the week of Easter. 

Then life happened.

The week following Low Sunday was a trip out of town. The week after that was wedding preparations. The week following that was funeral preparations. The week after that brings us to today. Hopefully, we're back on track.


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Pastor: I don't take a day off. The devil doesn't take a day off, so why should I?
Wise Parishioner: You need a better role model.

This old Internet meme highlights something we Pastors are often guilty of: refusing to take time for self-care. I'm feeling it right now, as my comments above point out; that sense of weariness as the weight of the world takes its toll.

But we bring it on ourselves, forgetting that we're no good to anyone exhausted and careworn. As the joke above points out, we need a better role model to follow and there is no better one than Christ himself. Jesus often took time out of his ministry to retreat from the world. He went off to the mountain to pray, to recharge, and to rest. And he does this A LOT. Two or three occasions in each of the Gospel accounts, the Mark text I reference above being just one of them.

from Pinterest

Now, as a pastor, I can call out myself and my colleagues for our failures in this regard. But let's be honest. We are hardly the only profession who is guilty of this failure.

Some months ago, I remember driving with the radio playing and an advertisement for a new business phone system came on. It was touting all these features, including "no matter where you are, you're never away from the office" or something to that effect.

What a nightmare. People would actually want that?

The sad truth is yes. For many, that's become something of an ideal. Never getting away. Becoming the ultimate paragons of productivity. We take work home with us in order to keep up with it. It goes with us on vacation. No matter where we are, we're never away from the office. We fill up our schedules with busyness and activity and do not take time to recharge. We see leisure and rest as evils, a sin of idleness or frivolity.

And we suffer for it. After all, as is true with people like me, we are no good to anyone exhausted and careworn and that's exactly what we're becoming.

Jesus often got in trouble for breaking the rules of the Sabbath, but he only ever broke them in common sense ways (i.e. helping people in need). He was fastidious in keeping those laws in the way they were truly meant to be kept: The Sabbath is the gift of rest, so take a break. His mountain excursions were his Sabbath and he kept to the habit, knowing he needed that time with his Father to renew his strength for the work ahead.

Go and do likewise. As spring and summer come upon us, don't let work become an all-consuming idol that devours your life. Remember the Sabbath and what it is for. Take a break to recharge and renew and become yourself again.