Trying not to Drown in a Flood of Breaking News
No solutions here but the cartoon sums up what we’re all struggling with:
One of the remedies for burnout that I explore in Reset is friendship. Although, as Kelly Needham admits, True Friendship is Hard to Find, there are many motivations and advantages to pursuing it:
1. True friends heighten our joy in God.
2. True friends expose sin in us that keeps us from God.
3. True friends encourage us to obey God.
4. True friends bring us to God in our weakness.
5. True friends love us for the glory of God.
In How To Get Away From It All, Michael Hyatt looks back on a surprising vacation and identifies five ways in which it helped him reboot his soul:
- I went someplace beautiful.
- I was fully present.
- I had deep conversations.
- We spent time alone.
- I had an adventure.
Quite a few recent articles on the necessity and advantages of a weekly Sabbath. In Better than Busy: Recovering Rest in a Burnout Culture, Colin Noble says:
Our digital age simply offers new manifestations of the age-old temptation to usurp God’s role for ourselves. But against this age-old temptation, God offers an age-old response: what would happen to our 24/7 switched-on world if the people who came to Jesus for rest (Matthew 11:28) regularly took a day of rest from distraction, work, and busyness? What would this weekly habit have to offer to the world in which we find ourselves — a world that restlessly continues to search for peace amid busyness?
He offers four reasons to observe a weekly Sabbath.
1. Taking a weekly day of rest is a sign that we desire God.
2. Taking a weekly day of rest is a sign that we trust God.
3. Taking a weekly day of rest proclaims Christ’s supremacy.
4. Taking a weekly day of rest declares our freedom.
Here’s Tim Keller on The Power of Deep Rest
Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you if you don’t have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of Sabbath. Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave—not to your culture’s expectations, your family’s hopes, your medical school’s demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph—otherwise you will feel guilty for taking time off, or you will be unable to truly unplug.
And Ian Hamilton on the Sabbath as The Foundation of Godliness.
We live in a mad, bad world. Equip yourself to face it and not be overwhelmed by it, by honouring the Sabbath day, and by imitating the example of the Saviour, who ‘often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.’ He needed to, and he did. We need to and we must.
Sleep continues to fill the headlines as more and more are realizing how important it is for human flourishing on every level. Apparently Beauty Sleep is a Real Thing. A couple of bad nights is enough to make a person look “significantly” more ugly. To make maters worse, that puts people off from socializing with you! And if that’s not bad enough, Reducing Sleep also makes you hungry. So what to do if you’re an insomniac? Here’s a excellent article on Sleep Disorders and the Glory of God.
Pastors especially will want to read about The Best Way to Avoid Pastor Burnout.
Mark Elfstrand interviewed me about Living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture.
And here are a few reflections on Reset, one by Scott Slayton, one by Josh Reich, and one by Mike Leake.
More Grace-Pace Life Resources here.