In a day and age where we want the immediate, flip of the switch results, it can be a powerful thing to institute some hard stops in our life.
We’ve been experimenting with establishing a 24-hour sabbath for the last four weeks. It’s been incredible- like a weekly vacation, which is saying something because we are in the thick of tax season.
I’ve been putting my phone on “do not disturb” and placing it on a shelf in the kitchen. So I don’t look at or worry about anything related to my phone for 24 hours. From sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday. We have slept more, burned fires all day, feasted on good food, played games with kids and simply stopped.
A couple of those days, we’ve gone next door during lunch to grill some pizzas and hang out with friends. We talk about life and God and the things that matter more than mere busyness of activities.
In a culture that esteems busyness and hands out badges for how many activities your kids are involved in each week, to do the complete opposite can be considered a bit weird. But as one who has kind of done a lot of things a little bit differently, I can say that in twenty years there won’t be an regrets when we think about a weekly rhythm of stopping to be with each other rather than being busy all the time.
Time is our most valuable resource. It’s the only thing that everyone has access to but it’s also the easiest thing to let external forces (jobs, people, etc) decide for us how it is to be used.
There’s a subtle and quiet power in stopping. So when things feel like they’re careening out of control… stop.
