Stop

I decided to stop on Sunday. Really stop. Like not move more than ten feet from my couch if I could help it. I did watch football and read sections of John Calvin's Commentaries on James.  

If you have been perusing the blog this week, you know it has been the "Cold Chronicles" detailing my successes and failures in beating back a cold like a wild dog. Throughout last week, I didn't take a day off of work. I had too much to do and could not afford to miss a day. We are in a semester change (year is half-over) and the transition is a challenging traverse with schedule changes, new students registering, and the various other sundry duties of a school counselor. So I had to let the cold dog gnaw at my leg all week. A sick day would have caused me to be so far behind that all I would have done was sat at home worrying about all that I needed to do. So, I toughed it out. I didn't feel bad but didn't feel great either. That gray area of some sickness, but mostly just feeling drained as a battery.

On Saturday, we had a 40th birthday to go to for a dear friend and I didn't want to miss it. This was a must-go--for such milestones, once passed, are gone forever. On Sunday, the Church I attend had its monthly community outreach--to serve breakfast to Occupy Lancaster. I really wanted to go and had even bought a dozen eggs prior to make a cheesy dish. I decided to bail-out, sensing that if I didn't stop my cold would become one of those chronic one's, hanging around like a drug dealer on the corner of my life, dispensing misery and mayhem. I wanted it arrested.

Today, I feel as if perhaps the worst of the cold is behind me. I just needed a day to stop. I say perhaps because I don't want to taunt it, causing it to reassert itself anew.

It is easy when we are down, stressed, ill, and weary to just keep at it and that is often our undoing. We need to recognize our limitations and frailty. There are two types of Sabbaths conveyed in the Bible. One is a literal day of resting, the other---apparently it is a very rare Greek word here in this verse below--conveys a rest spiritually given by God, the forgiveness of sins, the restoration of peace to a soul. It is possible for someone to rest physically for a day but still be in tumult because they are oppressed by evil from both the inside and the outside. That lack of rest is tortuous.

Hebrews 4:9 

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.