Do you need a time-out from life? A do-nothing day that doesn’t require folding laundry or preparing a meal. Maybe it’s one where you stay in your jammies and read a book or watch a Hallmark movie. We need those days. We need to catch our breath and settle our souls. We need to sit still and commune with God to find restoration and rejuvenation.

We need a break.

When God created the world, He did it in six days, and Genesis 2 tells us that He blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He rested from all the work of creating He had done and gave us instructions to honor the Sabbath.

He gave us a license to lounge.

As a Christian, I always believed that Jews honored the Sabbath. But this day is for everyone who longs to walk according to God’s ways. After all, the Ten Commandments say to “remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.”

I know some of you doers are reading this thinking…there is no way I can take a do-nothing day. I have too much to do and little time to accomplish the tasks. Hey, I get that. I’m also a doer, so honoring this day is challenging me. I love to make lists and check things off.

But then…I get tired.

So, at the risk of burning out, stressing out, or freaking out, I committed to taking a Sabbath day. I’m still figuring out my method and learning that everyone’s practice of a day of rest can look different.

In Mark 2, we read that Jesus interrupted the Pharisees’ legalist approach to this day when He and the disciples picked grain on the Sabbath. The pompous religious leaders tried to catch Jesus and His crew working when they shouldn’t. But His response was liberating: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

God has given us a license to lounge AND there is freedom in how we implement it.

Go ahead, friends, accept the invitation for a break. Put your phones down, turn off the computer, and seek Him to find rest.

“There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Let us, therefore make every effort to enter that rest.” Hebrews 4: 9,11