busy busy busy, do do do

Numbers 9:17-18, NLT
Whenever the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel would break camp and follow it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel would set up camp. In this way, they travelled and camped at the LORD ’s command wherever he told them to go.

I posted on Twitter recently that I had scheduled a week off to get my house straight, potter in the garden, and think. Someone told me I was being “self indulgent”. Clearly they’d missed all the conversations of the last two years around self-care, good mental health, and prioritising but…

… there is a lesson here. Self-care is hard for the busy-busy, the doers, the recovering people-pleasers. We recognise the need not to be overextended but so worry someone may need us in the very moment we choose to take some downtime.

We have to remember no-one cares more for welfare of human beings than the Lord. He models contentment in stillness when he finishes Creation. He proves his care for us in the way he builds rest into the schedule of the Israelites and in his insistence we celebrate Sabbath. He tells us to be still and know he is God.

Of course sometimes, just sometimes, our habit of stepping in and trying to fix things for someone is the very act that will prevent them from going to him themselves.

The Father has already worked out our part in the world’s redemption. We can rest and learn only to move when he moves.

Let's pray
Lord, make me wise. Help me to know when to rest and to move, when to settle and when to initiate change, when to stop and when to charge forward into the new things you have for me. Thank you that I can trust you to lead me well. Help me to follow well. In Jesus' matchless name. Amen.