You can create the sabbath rest you need when you unwind and rewire the habitual thinking driving you to work more than you want.
To create restorative rest, you get to detach your worthiness of rest from your accomplishments. You’ve been taught that your worthiness is connected to your accomplishments. But I’m here to tell you that, as much as you’ve been conditioned to think otherwise, your worthiness as a human being has nothing to do with what you’ve done or left undone. How well you do your job has nothing to do with your belovedness as a child of God. You are in right relationship with God, your fellow humans and all of Creation not because of what you did or didn’t accomplish today. The only thing that brings you into the right relationship with God is faith in Christ.
To create restorative rest requires giving yourself permission to rest. There is no one giving you permission to rest. This permission gets to come from you. How? By resting in the assurance that you are enough regardless of what you accomplish or don’t during the week.
This message is excerpted from “Sabbath for this year and beyond” by Crystal L. Hall from the January 2024 Café online magazine. Today we commemorate Thomas Aquinas, teacher, 1274.
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