Health And Hope

• If you have to sit down all day, then have a time of exercise. If you are on your feet all day, then sit down and do something different.
• Try to plan a few days away at least once a year, but keep the time simple and uncluttered. Bright lights and activities will only add to the stress.

• During the day have 'two minute holidays'. These are fun! Take time just to stop and stare, read something you have been meaning to, look at a bird on a twig, examine your house plant, smile to yourself. If in that time you plan something to make someone else feel more better, your two minute holiday will be even more beneficial.

Too often we cut the corners off our rest times and try to fit in even more things, or we just become mentally paralysed and exhausted. Both states show a body crying out for intervals of rest.

At the beginning of this article, we talked about having the rest that comes from being supported and not having to carry all the weight your self. God was concerned enough to say to everyone that is tired - ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28-30 This could be one of the promises in that file by your bed.

REFLECTION

• 7th We have discovered that we are designed for only six days work at a time. What about the seventh day in the week? The man-made proverb talks about activity - 'Early to bed and early to rise …' ’ The early bird catches the worm’. But God talks to us about our need for rest too. Our need for a time to stop for 24 hours. Each seventh day, each week, is an intended rest day, a God given break, time out, time off. A full 24 hours of quiet and blessing.
• 7th 'Remember the Sabbath day (rest day)to keep it holy.' We have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for our normal cycles of waking and sleeping, activity and rest, and this meets the needs of our physical elements. But there are mental, spiritual and moral parts to our life too . These are the parts of us that are connected with holiness. To be holy means to become like God. To be pure, transparent, faithful, loving, forgiving, restoring. It is on the seventh day of the week that we have this blessing and privilege and this re-creation.
• 7th Which is the world’s oldest religious festival? The seventh day of the week, the rest day designed for us, is Saturday. How do we know? Dictionaries tell us this, even though business has changed the week to begin on a Monday for convenience. Jewish people who have always honoured the seventh day, have remembered Saturday consistently, and so they are a living reminder to us. In Germany, Wednesday is called Mittwoch (midweek). This makes Sunday the first day of the week, Saturday the last of the seven day week. God calls Saturday, the seventh day, the Sabbath. He has given it to us as a day to forget the washing and the ironing, the shopping, the work, the events in the week, and come aside into rest, to find peace, to be re-created mentally, to talk to the One who made us, and to be restored for the week ahead.
• 7th The lost rhythm of life. God says in the Bible 'The sabbath was made for man(kind)'. Mark 2:27 It was a gift to the human race. We recognise the other rhythms of our lives but often we do not even know about this one. God has put it in the Ten Commandments. Just like a loving parent says to a child - get to bed early, God says, Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. He says this because we need it. Each Saturday we, and even our animals, are entitled by God to have a day's break.