I have one of those watches that tells me how my sleep was last night. The news isn’t good this morning. Under the number of hours that I should be sleeping and getting up more in the middle of the night than what is restful. The software that tells me about the metrics taken by my watch gives me a score, and let’s just say, with those kind of scores – I’m not making it into anybody’s sleep playoffs.
Although maybe I will, because I’m pretty sure your sleep is awful too. That’s just playing the numbers knowing that only 26% of Americans regularly get 8 hours of sleep. Another 20% normally get 5 hours or less. 50 to 70 million people have sleep disorders. Of those sleep disorders, 16% of women report insomnia and 11% of men.
And that’s just sleep. The interesting thing about our national narrative about our lack of rest? It usually only pays attention to waking time vs. sleeping time. But as humans we need rest time that isn’t sleep time, time that is leisure or recreation. One study I read said that as working hours routinely push earlier in the morning and later in the evening, we have less daylight for leisure and recreation – meaning that we’re stuck with the option of our glowing screens in the dark for our recreation and leisure time instead of walking or playing games or even just sitting outside and watching the sun go down.
I routinely wonder what God’s message for us would be if He was willing to give us a press conference before He came back. I mean, there would be a lot of stuff in the press conference, but I think one of those things would be calling us out on our lack of resting. Which is maybe why Jesus says in Mark 6:31, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
We pay some lip service to this, but do we as Christians really embrace our God-given command to rest? Let me repeat that this is a command. It’s the 3rd commandment, lumped in with murder and adultery.
It would take more than a one-off newsletter article about a red letter challenge for the week to really change this, but every big change starts with little changes. What is one *restful* little change that you could make? 15 minutes earlier to bed? 20 minutes with a drink and a friend on the porch every Tuesday, ending with the two of you praying for each other briefly? Stealing away secretly to visit a park with your Bible on your lunch break once a week?
It should probably be the easiest command for us to follow, but if there’s ever proof that we’re sinners, it’s how we do such a terrible job with rest. So, ironically, your challenge this week is this: it’ll be hard work, but get out there and rest (and invite the Lord that commanded you to rest to come along – He will).