TAKING A BREAK

[The Lord said to Moses:] ‘The Lord has given you the sabbath, therefore on the sixth day he gives you food for two days; each of you stay where you are; do not leave your place on the seventh day.’ So the people rested on the seventh day.

[EXODUS 16:29-30 nrsvue]

DAILY LECTIONARY READINGS – APRIL 17, 2026
AM Psalm 16, 17; PM Psalm 134, 135 Exod. 16:23-36; 1 Pet. 3:13-4:6; John 16:1-15

I am a person who lives by deadlines.

Now that’s a paradoxical statement if there ever was one.

Most of my life has been driven by the tension of getting something done by a certain time.

That’s also been the biggest challenge in retirement.

The absence of obligations has fueled a different type of anxiety. I feel unproductive, dare I say, useless.

That fear of uselessness is part of what has pushed my commitment to posting a reflection each Tuesday and Friday. There’s a small pestering voice that demands me to do something – anything!

Over the past couple weeks, the daily lectionary readings from the Old Testament have been taking us through Exodus and are now in the wilderness narrative.

The Israelites find themselves in a time of uncertainty, longing for the stability of what they had in Egypt.

They tend to forget the backbreaking, relentlessness of slavery under Pharaoh.

So they complain to an exasperated Moses, who in turn, looks to God for answers to the constant harangue of the ungrateful people that God has called him to lead.

Despite the doubtless irritability, God provides for all their needs: water, food, protection, and most of all, rest.

They forget that life in Egypt did not allow them a day of rest, something that even God took time to do.

Reflecting on those readings prompted me to look in my bookshelf and pick up a little book by Walter Brueggemann that I read some time ago, Sabbath As Resistance, Saying NO to the Culture of NOW.¹

In rereading parts of it this morning, I was reminded that there is nothing wrong in taking a breather.

Brueggemann writes:

Sabbath is not simply a pause. It is an occasion for reimagining all of the social life away from coercion and competition to compassionate solidarity. Such solidarity is imaginable and capable of performance only when the drivenness of acquisitiveness is broken. Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms. [Brueggemann, p. 45]

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am in need of such transformation.

I felt a sense of liberation when I concluded my last interim assignment in August of 2025. Although I loved the people I was serving, I felt a sense of burnout. I had served in four different settings over three years without a real break.

I felt I would be able to return to some sort of semi-regular ministry in a while. In the meantime, writing would fulfill my mission to contribute to the voice in the marketplace.

But writing, too, has begun to feel like an obligation.

There is so much going on, and I don’t need to express an opinion on everything.

Quite honestly, others should heed that advice as well.

One person that comes to mind is the resident of the White House who delights in posting incessantly and most often incoherently at ungodly hours. There appears to be no thought in his brain that he doesn’t feel obliged to put to print despite the fact that there are more important issues that should demand his attention.

The noise is deafening.

But I digress.

So, I’m taking a pause for a while.

Whenever I feel compelled to return to this platform to voice a thought, I will.

After all, it’s not as if I myself have not articulated a myriad of opinions on countless topics on this page over the years – over six hundred posts at last count. In the words of the immortal Casey Stengel, “You can look it up!”

Reading that statement makes me think that I should consider taking the log out of my own eye before taking the speck out of someone else’s.

But for the time being, I will read, relax, practice my photography, exercise, watch more baseball and, in general, do something other than stare at a computer screen.

It is truly an opportunity to take time to be still and know that God is God.

Let us pray:
O God of peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer, edited p. 832)

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1. Brueggemann, Walter. Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. ↩︎