One of the most astounding set of facts I have come across recently has been how much the average American works. We actually lead the world in the particular field of vacation time not taken, meaning that we leave more vacation time sitting on the table than any other nation in the world. Which made for the great headline of a click-bait article I posted recently: “The average American worker takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant.” 
But the thing that made me share the article wasn’t that we take less vacation time. It was rather that it showed how a medieval peasant would take less vacation time specifically because of the Church. The article cited that the average medieval peasant would have at least every Sunday off, and then saints days and other celebrations as well.
And sure, there is plenty of room for wisdom here. After all, we are not medieval peasants nor to most of us aspire to that vocation. Luther actually was one of the driving forces behind getting rid of some of the vacation days of the common peasant. He recognized that having up to half of the year “off” due to the celebrations of saints days was hurting the economy of Germany and he rallied against those celebrations.
But there is something to the counter cultural move away from 24-7 productivity. As much as we may joke about the inconvenience of Chick Fil A being closed on Sundays, there is an undeniable message there. The message is “your rest is important to us,” perhaps even “your rest is more important to us than it is to you.”
The “midwestern work ethic” part of my brain is screaming at me right now, by the way. I come from the stock of farmers who got up at dark o’clock in the morning and small business owners who didn’t have a substitute that could fill in for them on the holidays. My generational ghosts are not happy with my advocacy of “laziness”. But a part of me thinks that they may still have been more rested than most of us. And maybe it wasn’t as much of a risk for them to close up shop and get in fancy clothes and go to church, but they did it, and they seemed to be better for it. Maybe they unconsciously heard God’s call to come and rest.
I hear it from you. You’re busy, you’re tired, you’re overworked, over stressed, and coming to church is a chore because everything else in your life is a chore and it’s hard to even identify what rest is anymore. I don’t have the answers, but I’m hearing the questions. Somehow I know God is what makes the difference there. Somehow I know that God promises to call us to rest, that is, before we die. I trust that the 3rd commandment is a good thing, but I get how it seems like God’s most cruel imperative on Sunday morning.
So we’re going to talk about this in the newsletter for the next little bit. I’m hoping it connects you to a sense of what rest might look like where God is involved, and I’m hoping that it might help us shape a life where we show that our own rest is important so that we can witness to others about how their rest might be important as well.