This weekend, Daylight Saving Time ends. There are a couple of things I always have to look up. The phrase is "Daylight Saving Time," not "Daylight SavingS Time." We're saving daylight, not accumulating savings. I used to always get that wrong until a webmaster in my corporate job kept correcting me. Also, I know to spring forward in the Spring and fall back in the fall, but Is standard time in the winter or summer? Are we ending or starting the saving time now (I had to look it up in order to write the first sentence of this article).
The good news is that we get to sleep an extra hour this weekend. I know I need it. Correlations between traffic accidents and the springing forward of the clocks in the spring suggest that this one hour of rest (and more importantly the shift in the biorhythms associated with it) affects everyone. Of course, overnight shift workers should get paid an extra hour this weekend.
I don't know about you, but feel like I've been working extra hard this fall. For various reasons, I haven't regularly taken a day off like I should. My continuing education retreat took one of my days off; an extra day of Presbytery meeting resulted in shifting some work around to my day off to make up for it; etc. I'm not usually one to emphasize self-care, but sometimes you just have to stop and rest.
Of course, that's one explanation about what the sabbath law is all about. In the NRSV, it says "On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation." I like this phrasing because it's not such a rigid prohibition from work. I imagine God picking up and putting away tools and going around with a dust pan to sweep up, THEN resting (the NRSV Updated Edition says "sixth" day for that finishing, and a footnote says ancient versions of the Bible had both). The ten commandments in Exodus say to remember the Sabbath to keep it Holy. The Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy say to remember the Sabbath by not making your slaves or animals work so that you remember that's what God did when God liberated God's people from slavery in Egypt.
Once in my corporate job, we had a database conversion last for almost 36 hours (it went a lot faster in testing). We had a policy that when you worked overnight to resolve a problem you should attend a status meeting to transfer knowledge, then go home and stay home for 24 hours. I thought that I should sleep a little and come back to the office to support the team instead. When I crashed at home, though, I crashed hard, and after sleeping extra and getting food and shower, it turned out I had been away from work for 24 hours. We joke that the 24 hour rule was not a department policy, but a law of nature.
God wants you to thrive and enjoy the blessings God has given you. Thriving means not just living, but living well, pursuing things that are fun for you, not having to worry or stress over things. God loves you; for this reason more than any other, take care of yourself. I'm not a stickler for rules or micromanaged rubrics for how to do that; you'll have to figure it out for yourself. As you're able, eat well, get enough sleep, move around. Know when your body and mind are at their limits and rest before you reach them. Go to routine medical and dental and mental checkups. Those who know me well will hear the caveat "Do what I say and not what I do." I think about these things for my own sake as much as for yours.
This weekend, set your clocks back an hour and enjoy the extra sleep (or extra pay). If you and some others come to church early, take a walk or go get some coffee and catch up. Otherwise, see you well rested in church Sunday.
Blessings,
--Chas
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