My Amish neighbors are out there with their loud leaf blower at all hours of the day, blowing every speck of rubbish. Nearly every day. And their blower is loud. Why? They absolutely do not need to do that. Yet they do. I love Lancaster County where I’ve lived all my life. But I have to admit that sometimes it’s a bit much when it comes to work.
Just ask most Lancastrians the question, “How are you doing?”
“Busy.” “Tired.” “Ready for the weekend.” “Ready for vacation.”
We Lancastrians aren’t good at rest. In fact, getting rest is an difficulty for most Americans it seems.
An article from the National Institutes of Health reports that, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 3 adults in the United States reported not getting enough rest or sleep every day. Nearly 40% of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning to at least once a month. Also, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic, or ongoing, sleep disorders. Sleep deficiency can lead to physical and mental health problems, injuries, loss of productivity, and even a greater likelihood of death.”
Does that relate to you or anyone close to you? We Americans tend not to be good at rest. I find myself sitting on the sofa falling asleep, pretty much any time of day. The older I get the more I find this happening. But in the middle of the night, when I’m actually supposed to be sleeping, I can toss and turn, get up to use the restroom, and struggle to find that long deep sleep. So I wake up in the morning still tired.
Here’s another way to look at it: I call it seminary guilt. When I was in seminary for both my masters degree and my doctorate, there was always reading to plow through, research, assignments, and papers. I would feel guilty if I took any free time off and wasn’t doing seminary work. The deadlines were looming large over my head, and I hated the feeling of knowing that I tons of reading yet to do, assignments to complete, papers to write. But I would eventually work through all of it, get it done, and the semester would be over. A weight was lifted, and I was free. I had no more seminary work to do. But a funny thing happened. I still felt like I should be reading, producing, creating. I couldn’t just rest and enjoy the time off. I felt guilty for doing nothing.
Maybe you’ve felt something like that. Production guilt is embedded in our American cultural psyche. Some call it the Protestant work ethic. In the Lancastrian culture where I live, that guilt is rooted in our PA Dutch farming heritage. Even if a family has no farming in their ancestry, even if they are not from Lancaster, that work ethic, that guilt, is in the air. It gets in your mindset without you even knowing it. Leaves you feeling like it is normal to be working nonstop. Like leaf-blowing every speck of dust from your property, every day.
The result is that rest is not only hard to come by, but it can seem wrong. With only a few weeks till my sabbatical starts, I am starting a blog mini-series about rest, sabbath, sabbatical, jubilee, and what God has to say about it in his word. Check back here on Monday and we’ll get started.
Photo by Callum Hill on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 