My mantra for today is, “I don’t wanna.”  I woke up with a headache this morning.  This is never a good sign for the rest of my day.  Usually, I can treat a headache with ibuprofen and it gets a lot better.  When I wake up with one there is nothing that really helps until I can go back to bed and go to sleep.  That is usually not really an option, or at least I say it’s not an option.  I do my best to stick to my usual routine and try to power through the day.  That is what I am trying to do today.  I am doing fairly well right now.  We’ll see how that plays out as the day goes on.

However, right now I also am at the point that I just don’t want anything else on my schedule.  Contrary to popular belief, pastor’s do not just work from nine to noon on Sundays.  The everyday demands of a pastor are many.  They are time consuming, stamina consuming, and people-y (meaning that they require frequent interactions with others.)  Generally this is not a problem for me.  I can do my job, interact with my people, and then go home for some down time and rest.  Today is not that day.  Today I look at my calendar and realize that I not only have all the usual stuff, but I have out of town appointments and meetings on Friday and Saturday – my “weekend” – and I leave right after lunch on Sunday for our annual clergy retreat, which isn’t nearly all retreat time and which also takes time away from my usual routine tasks in preparing for next Sunday’s worship service.  Somehow between now and then I still have to do laundry, pack, get my oil changed, and make sure there is enough food in the house for my husband and my dogs to eat while I am gone.  I am afraid that there will be no rest for the weary, nor for the headache, this evening.

I think I need to preach to the choir here for a little bit.  If someone came into my office experiencing the same things I am experiencing, my advice would be, “Take care of yourself.  Take a sick day or a vacation day to rest, relax, and do what you need to do for yourself and your family.”  But when it comes to me, my self-advice is usually quite the opposite.  “Power through.  You’ve got this.”  Does anyone else have this problem?  If we are honest with ourselves, I think we – at least Gen Xers and older, and I suspect Millennials and younger as well – can relate.

When I worked in the corporate world, mental health days were not a thing.  We weren’t encouraged to take a day of now and then to take care of ourselves.  Heck, many times I was pressured to coming into work when I was sick and contagious.  Friends, we were not created for this non-stop, power through it kind of life.  Even God rested.  God, the One who created the universe and everything in it, looked at all God had done and called it good. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation. (Genesis 2:2-3).

If God needed to take a day to rest and recover, who are we to think that we can do something different.  We were created in the image of the Master Creator who told us, Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.  For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.  (Exodus 20:8-11).  We need to keep a sabbath where we do no work.  We need to REST, just like God rested from God’s labors.  We were created with a need for it.  It is not an option.  To be our best selves – the selves that God created us to be – we need to work (and even work hard) for six days.  But we need a sabbath, a seventh day, to rest.  It doesn’t matter if that day is Sunday or Wednesday or any other day of the week.  It just matters that it is and that we observe that day.

I think I am done preaching for a minute.  But I need someone to hold me accountable to my own advice.  As such, will you covenant with me today to take a sabbath?  Not just once in a while.  Not just on the days when we wake up with a headache or those days where our mantra is, “I don’t wanna.”  But every week.  Every seven days. Fifty-two weeks out of every year.  If it was good and necessary for God, how much more so is it for you and me?

And with that, friends, this pastor has nothing else to say.