November 2: Switching over to standard time - falling back, and getting rest

Ezekiel 3:16-6:14

Hebrews 4:1-16

Psalm 104:24-35

Proverbs 26:27

As I write this, I am very tired.  After a long week of work, I stayed up last night waiting for my daughter to come home from a Halloween party.  She got home close to midnight, and I had to get up at 6 (on a Saturday!) to get to a 3 mile race I was running in New York.  When that was done, I came home to make lunch (Carla was out with Christian at a swim meet).  Then I had errands to run, while Carla took Thomas to his tennis lesson.  The errands took me to Costco, to a shower door store (don't ask...), to the drug store and the cleaners.  By the time I got home, it was time to make dinner.  After cleaning up, I had to assemble first the shelves (with my daughter Sophia's help), then the desk chair I'd bought at Costco earlier that day.  I also had to put the shelves into the basement storage area, then stack the boxes that were meant to go on it.  It is 9:35 PM as I write this - is it any wonder I am tired?

There is the prospect of an extra bit of rest tonight (assuming none of the kids come into our room unable to sleep) - we fall back into standard time tonight, and we get an extra hour of sleep as a result.  The truth is,though, an extra hour isn't going to do much to rejuvenate me.  I need much more.  I need the rest St Paul writes about in Hebrews 4; I need to enter into God's rest, a Sabbath-rest that lets me rest from my works, "just as God did from His." I think of it as a rest that recognizes no other need than to spend time with our Lord, that understands that on the Sabbath, one does not work; instead, one trusts in the Lord about whom the Psalmist wrote "All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.  When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things."

As available as God makes His Sabbath rest to me, I admit it is difficult to experience, and that difficulty is my fault.  Not only does the obvious sin keep me from His rest, but the unwillingness to relinquish control to Him, to trust in His providence,, to surrender the burden He has asked for that I insist on carrying - all this keeps me from that Sabbath rest.  So in the end, if I am exhausted, it is my fault.  If I could only learn to fall back - ON HIM - I would get my rest.

Dear God, please save me from my stubbornness.  

Are you tired?  If you are, are reading this on facebook, and have suggestions on how to enter that Sabbath rest, add your comments below!

A FOOTNOTE:  I was thinking of writing a different reflection and calling it "Don't be Wile E. Coyote", and referencing today's Proverb.