SLOW DOWN! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.
Life is crazy busy, and packed with more and more to do. Were we intended to go at that pace? Is it healthy for us to just pack more into every day? I don’t think so. Yet we do. We fill our waking hours with work, social activities, clubs, church, volunteer programs and hundreds of miles of transporting kids. At the end of it all, we are tired and exhausted.
Our family is active. Between running a camp ministry, family responsibilities, helping others and then running a training kennel we are busy. Each day starts early and runs late. We enjoy it, maybe even thrive on it, but is it really the healthiest way to live?
With the invention of the lightbulb our days suddenly got longer. They can now start earlier and end later. With the invention of the TV we never have to just sit quietly and reflect or allow our minds to wander or rest. With the invention of the computer, cell phone and iPad we can literally be working from anywhere, all the time. As we found this year, we can work remotely from anyplace we have a connection.
Believe it or not, something amazing happened with the onset of Covid. It allowed us, if only for a brief time, to slow down a bit! In the first few weeks of the pandemic businesses were shut down. The schools and after-school programs shut down. This allowed people time. Time most of us weren’t used to. Some of us didn’t appreciate the time either. People had time to reflect, read, listen to music, and have conversations with family members and friends. It wasn’t all bad.
Perhaps, we can learn the value of slowing down once in a while. We need time to recover. We need time to mentally unplug. We need time to quiet ourselves before God to talk to Him and listen to Him. In the busyness of life it isn’t always easy to set this quiet time aside.
As businesses have opened and found more ways for us to work in person or remotely, as schools have resumed in person or remote learning, we may have found life moving closer to the business that it once was. My hope in this process is that we have also found the value in quietness. I hope that we have found value in relaxing and taking some time off. It is not easy to do. But it is healthy both for our spiritual health as well as our physical health.