Many years ago when I was a teenager there was a priest who would start every homily by saying the words ‘Sit down and rest awhile.’ The words still mean so much to me. God desires rest for us because it does not come naturally to us. To rest, we have to trust that God will take care of things for us. We have to trust that, if we take a day off, the world will not stop turning on its axis.
The Bible speaks quite highly of rest. It is a repeated theme throughout Scripture. The easiest thing we can do in this day and age is over do it. Just look around. Everyone is over doing everything. Over eating, over shopping, over consuming, overthinking and over doing it!
Those things happen because you are overwhelmed with the need to do everything at one time. Rest is good for you spiritually and physically. The body rejuvenates when we rest and the soul tunes in.
Today we all try to do too many things at once – texting while driving, eating while watching TV – and we’ve lost an understanding of the brain’s need to focus on one thing.
Doing this for even a short period has been shown to affect the nervous system, change blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. The idea behind mental rest is to get so engrossed in something simple that the big stuff no longer bothers you.
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