Rest, Refuel, and Reconnect

“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence . . .” ~Thomas Merton


In reading this quote I couldn’t see how getting caught up in life is a form of violence. To help me out to compare notes on what violence is I turned to my pocket pal Webster to look the word up. His view of the word was much different than mine. I see violence as something horrible done to other people, a force, a violation, a bullying type of behavior. Webster tells me it’s an exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. It is a type of injury by infringement and intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force, or undue alteration.


With the new light I now had on the word violence I can see very well how it could be seen as violence. Busying ourselves with life, over booking our schedules, allowing ourselves to be carried away by a multitude of concerns eventually gets to us. If we do it long and hard enough it creates stress in our lives. A path that leads to an exertion of a physical force that is self-inflicted. An infringement or violation we bring upon ourselves.


Yep, self-inflicted violence, doesn’t that sound intelligent? Not really but we all do it to ourselves in one form or another. If not why is it that when you go to a doctor the first thing they ask you is if you have “stress” in your life. Well duh! Who doesn’t?


God created the seventh day of rest for a reason. It wasn’t just so He could take a breather. He knew we would self-destruct without it. We need it to take time off from life in general. A time to stop and look at where we are in our relationship with Him and assess how far away or close we have wondered or draw nigh to Him.


When we fail to take that time of rest, to let life go for a brief moment all we are doing is starting our six days of the week all over again. Soon it becomes another six and another six and the list goes on and the violence against self increases.


Wouldn’t it be nice if life halted on the seventh day so we could have a break from all that is going on? Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. If you have cancer on Saturday you’ll have it on Sunday too. If you are having money problems on the sixth day you’ll have them on seventh day too. What we are doing is taking a break from getting all wrapped up in what is going on around us.


It’s taking the time to Rest, Refuel, and Reconnect with the Lord. Instead of getting a little R & R we wind up getting more with R & R & R! When we do this it makes dealing with the other six days possible. It therefore makes us more beneficial to those around us.


“Be still and know that I am God.” It’s sad how far away we have moved from the blessing of being still. The world tells us that being still is being stagnant. The affects of being stagnant only sink in when we are inactive for God. Being quiet before the Lord is an active task. There’s a big difference between active and busy. There are a lot of people who can be very busy yet get nothing accomplished. Let’s use our R & R & R to be active with Christ not over-busy with the world.

© 2011 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing