Not the cold vacuum, but stopping, having a break. By the end of term, life can get a bit frantic, life can get on top of you, and a break is greatly required.
I was looking forward to coming home, especially as I haven't been back since Christmas. My first day back home, I went to a retreat day in preparation for Holy Week. One of the most useful things about the day was not the teaching, but just the quiet, the stillness, the time to "stop". It was raining, but that didn't bother me, and I spend time in the garden, just walking around, thinking, sorting out my thoughts and listening to "The Stand" and "Awesome God". It was good to give God some space.
Life seems to be constantly busy now, for everyone. People are working, then house keeping, with less and less time left for socialising, resting etc. There are times when I feel that we need to take a breather. One of my friends facebook statuses was ...is taking a deep breath ready for a busy week. It does often feel like we are diving into busyness and sometimes even trying to swim against the tide.
The creation story, as most people know has 7 days, the 7th being a rest day. I believe this is for a reason. Whether you believe in God or not, we need that 7th day to collect our thoughts and catch our breath. But in this world, when we work everyday of the week, we are removing that rest day. And we are suffering, the world is suffering.
I'm not sure where all this has come from, but I feel it's important. In a society where more and more people are suffering from stress, depression, other illnesses like that, we should be noticing this trend that working too much is bad for our health. So as we head towards Easter, maybe we should take this opportunity to slow down and take a breather.
And on a totally unrelated note, fish.
Ok, hope I haven't offended anyone, said anything too factually incorrect, or talked a load of jibberish!!
Take care, God bless,
Clare xxx
