Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.
Psalm 104:23 NKJV
Way back in Genesis 2:3, God set a pattern for humans to follow: He worked six days and rested on the seventh. In Exodus, God commanded His people to “remember the Sabbath Day [the seventh day] by keeping it holy” (20:8 NIV) and to rest and worship on that day. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV) Solomon wrote, “There is a time for everything” (NIV, emphasis added).
God knows you need both work and rest (preferably, the daytime for work and the nighttime for rest, for doing so follows the natural rhythms of your body). For if you never work, your muscles will weaken; your mind, atrophy; your spirit, sadden. You will feel purposeless and empty. And yet if you work all the time and never rest (ideally sleeping seven or eight hours each night and taking off at least one day per week), your body will fail you.
So go about your day and accomplish the tasks at hand. Whether you work in the home or outside of it, paid or unpaid, do all that lies before you today for the glory of God. But when it’s time to rest, never feel guilty for doing so. God created man and woman. He made the day and the night. He created the first workweek, and the Sabbath was His idea!
God, help me find the right balance between work and rest. Amen.
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Today’s reading was adapted from Daily Wisdom for Women: 2018 Devotional Collection with permission from Barbour Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reading was written by Amy Trent.