Recreation

Somewhere between the hustle culture sermons about “grinding for the Kingdom” and your boss passive-aggressively emailing you at 10 p.m. with a “quick question,” the idea of actual, soul-filling rest has been lost.

Rest isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity. A spiritual, emotional, and even physical game-changer that modern life is actively working against. We treat it like a reward for productivity, something we “earn” by checking enough boxes. But that’s not how it works. If you only allow yourself to rest when you’ve run out of energy, you’re not actually resting. You’re recovering from burnout.

For a generation that’s really into “self-care,” we sure are bad at resting. We schedule vacations that are more exhausting than our regular lives and take “Sabbath” as an excuse to binge entire seasons of prestige TV in one sitting.

The Bible starts with God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh—not because he was tired but because he was setting the rhythm. Rest wasn’t an afterthought. It was built into creation itself.

Jesus followed that rhythm too. He regularly stepped away from crowds, left people hanging (yes, really) and took time alone to pray. If the literal Savior of the world wasn’t available 24/7, why do we think we need to be?

Here’s the thing: rest isn’t just good for your soul. It’s good for your brain. Studies show that chronic stress literally rewires your brain, making it harder to focus, regulate emotions, and be productive in the long run.

The world thrives on keeping you busy. Consumerism, capitalism, and even some versions of church culture—there’s always something else to achieve. But choosing rest? That’s countercultural.

So, take a real Sabbath. Put your phone in another room. Go outside. Breathe. Let yourself rest. Because you don’t need to “earn” it. In fact, you were created for it.

“Now that you are retired, it’s time to play pickleball all day, every day.”

That’s the message from the front of a retirement card. It reflects the growing popularity of pickleball in the United States, especially among older adults. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the country. An article in TIME observes, “More than half (52%) of core [pickleball] players—those who play eight or more times a year—are 55 or older, and almost a third (32.7%) are 65-plus.”

If playing pickleball all day, every day isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps you’d rather have the poster that proclaims, “Retirement To Do List . . . Play Golf.”

Both the card and the poster bear witness to the popular view that retirement is mainly a time to play. For some, it’s pickleball or golf. For others, it’s cribbage or Wordle. For many retirees, travel is a delightful form of play, as is hanging out with friends or grandchildren. No matter the form it takes, play can be seen as the main point of retirement. “You worked hard for decades,” or so the story goes, “now it’s your turn to play.”

But, I wonder, is this a good way to think about retirement? If we want to flourish in this third of life—to live fully, fruitfully, and faithfully—where should play fit into our lives? Can play help us flourish? Or might it actually get in the way?

Do you ever find yourself reminiscing over your favorite childhood toys or memories? A new survey reveals that four in five Americans may be “kidults”—still looking up their childhood favorites for nostalgia.

The poll of 2,000 American Gen Zers and Millennials found that, if given the opportunity, 67 percent would try to buy a replica of something from their childhood and 76 percent feel a sense of nostalgia in the process. This comes as two in three (65%) adults realize they can now buy things for themselves that their parents would never let them have or couldn’t buy for them as a kid.

Commissioned by MGA’s Miniverse, the study found 59 percent of people consider themselves kidults—adults who hold onto their childhood spirit through consumer products like video games, toys, books, movies, fashion, and so on.

Isaac Larian at MGA Entertainment said,

Embracing nostalgia is a big part of being a ‘kidult.’ That feeling gives us the ability to hold onto the imagination and creativity we often associate with childhood. In many ways, holding onto toys and collectibles from our past is both liberating and entertaining, and miniature versions of them makes this experience more accessible. ... (Having) mini toys on display is a constant reminder of being a kid at heart.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It can be enjoyable to relive childish memories and even collect childhood toys. But it can also become a snare for some who never grow to maturity, especially spiritually. Some are content to remain a spiritual babe and never grow to adulthood in their faith (1 Cor. 3:1-3; Heb. 5:12-14).

Freelance writer Jason Heller describes how he and his wife made a pact a few years ago:

Every Sunday, we swore to each other, we will abstain from work. We start our morning and end our day by bingeing TV in bed. The door of our apartment is opened only for pizza to be slid inside. Chores go undone. Fitness is spurned. Job-related emails and texts are not read.

Lazy Sunday, as we like to call it, is hardly a revolutionary idea. A weekly time of rest is an ancient staple of several religions. And the five-day workweek has been the standard in the U.S., (but) spillover into non-workdays is common. A 2015 Rand survey found that about half of American employees do work in their free time in order to meet job demands. For many who started working from home during the pandemic, the boundary between labor and leisure has dissolved even further.

We shouldn’t need to actively protect our one day off—but sadly, we do. Rest time can feel indulgent or unnatural. ... The instinct to hustle—whether for success or just survival—is hard to shake. Still, we do need respite—not only from our jobs but from all of the many obligations that crop up in adult life.

Pre-pact, Angie and I often used Sundays to prep for the coming workweek. We thought we were buying time that we could spend later. The problem is that work is a bottomless pit—there’s always more to do. Sometimes, the people we’ve been close to for decades are the very people we tend to take for granted. Taking a break gives Angie and me the opportunity to really see each other again.

That might be the most important reason to pause work: not just to fuel up in preparation for more work later on, but for the sake of the pause itself. Although Angie and I aren’t religious, we really do think of our secular day of rest as sacred; that’s why we take pains to protect it. When you take away all the tasks you might feel pressed to do on a Sunday, what you’re left with isn’t an absence. It’s an opening.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Sabbath; Sunday; Rest - Although this article was admittedly written from a secular point of view, and includes excessive time with the TV, the central idea agrees wholeheartedly with Scripture (Exod. 20:8-11; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2). Obviously, for the believer, Sunday rest would include gathering with the Lord’s people for worship (Heb. 10:24-25), but also taking the rest of the day for rest and recovery from the week. 2) Labor Day – This holiday is a good reminder to return to God’s guidance of taking one day a week off to rest, not just once a year.

Top athletes around the region convened in early February for the Cascade Classic, the Northwest Goalball Regional Tournament. If you’ve never seen the sport of goalball in action, you’re not alone. Most of its participants haven’t seen it, either. The Cascade Classic is held at the Washington State School for the Blind.

Eliana Mason, a two-time Paralympic goalball medalist said, “We always say goalball is the coolest sport you’ve never heard of. It’s for blind athletes, but you really have to see it for it to make sense.”

Goalball was invented by occupational therapists working with World War II vets who’d lost their sight in the war. It’s three-on-three, played on a volleyball-sized court, and the object is to roll a basketball-sized ball into an opponent’s goal. And everything about the experience is tailored to the needs of visually impaired people.

All participants wear black-out goggles, so everyone is equally sightless. The lines on the court are raised, making it possible for players to orient themselves. The ball itself has bells inside of it, so players can hear it as it moves around. And spectators are asked to maintain silence, to assist the players in their auditory navigation.

Tournament director Jen Armbruster said, “Instead of hand-eye coordination, it’s hand-ear coordination. Ambruster founded the tournament in 2010 at Portland State University. She said, “My big thing is just getting folks involved in physical activity, competitive or recreation. A lot of times, especially on the visually impaired and blind side, so many of them get pulled out of P.E. They don’t know the adaptations that are out there.”

Mason tried goalball and was never the same. “Jen took us to Florida for a youth tournament, and I fell in love with the sport after I got to compete and just be in the community. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I had to compensate or work through a barrier. I could just be me.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) God is pleased when we make accommodations to include all the body of Christ in our activities. “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. (Rom. 15:1); 2) We should all become experts at being silent and listening to hear God’s voice.

In May, 1853, Phoebe and her husband Holden Judson joined a covered wagon train near Kansas City hoping to reach Washington Territory by mid-October. This was a distance of more than 2,000 miles over the rough Oregon Trail. Like all wagon trains, they elected a captain. His word was the law. Well, they chose Rev. Gustavus Hines, only to be surprised one Saturday night when he announced the train would never travel on Sundays.

Phoebe was shocked. They had half a continent to cross, at oxen pace (15-20 miles per day on a good trail), with mountain passes and innumerable river crossings ahead of them. She sat in her wagon and just fumed. One family deserted the train and joined another.

On their first Sunday, while they stood still, one train after another passed them by. They started out again on Monday, only to reach their first river cross on Tuesday evening. A long line of wagons stretched out ahead of them, waiting for the single ferry to carry them across. They waited three days. On Saturday they resumed the journey, only to be told they would still rest the whole next day. Phoebe was livid. This made absolutely no sense to her.

Then, a few weeks later she began to see scores of dead oxen, mules, and horses along the trail. They had been driven so relentlessly, they had collapsed and died. She grudgingly admitted that perhaps the animals needed a day of rest.

A few weeks later, she ruefully admitted that maybe the men needed it too, since they walked most of the time. Then she slowly began to notice that as they worshipped, ate, rested, and even played together on Sundays, it had a remarkably beneficial effect upon people’s spirits. There was less grumbling, more cooperation. She even noticed that they seemed to make better time the other six days.

Finally, what totally sold her on the value of the Sabbath happened one Sunday evening. The family that had deserted them came limping into their campsite, humbly asking to rejoin them. She had assumed they were at least a week ahead; in fact, they had fallen behind. Their own wagon train had broken down! Of course, they welcomed them back. And so it happened that they reached their destination in plenty of time, as friends, and out of the 50 head of cattle with which they began, only two were lost.

There’s a new trend at gym classes around the country. Americans emerging from more than two years of pandemic are looking for something new in their workouts: A good rest. Gyms say they are seeing increased demand for gentler classes, and they’re expanding their mellower offerings. They’re also rolling out dedicated “recovery” rooms equipped with massage lounge chairs and self-massage gadgets.

One participant said his workout reminds him of preschool nap time. He lies on a mat with pillows in a dimly lighted room and follows an instructor through a series of gentle stretches while calming music plays. Aptly named Surrender, the hourlong class in his Houston gym has been packed. The chain has increased the number of Surrender classes by an average of about 50% across its locations compared with 2019.

Months of stress and sweatpants have shifted priorities for gym-goers, with many saying they now care more about how they feel versus how they look. A recent survey of 16,000 Americans reported 43% are exercising to feel better and 59% to reduce stress. As one fitness expert said, “Leaving it all on the gym floor doesn’t seem like a priority as much.”

Author Lyall Watson, writing about the culture and habits of pigs, concludes that when young pigs play it is voluntary, random, and stimulated by novelty. “Jumping where there is nothing to jump over, running without going anywhere, fleeing when there is no enemy to flee from--all these are actions that lack any obvious function. They appear to be undertaken purely for pleasure.” Young wild boars chase windfall apples as readily as kittens chase balls of wool.

We call such behavior “play” and find no difficulty in recognizing it when we see it. It is easy to distinguish. An animal involved in play-fleeing or play-fighting looks very different from one seriously occupied in flight or fight. But it would be wrong to regard play just as something opposed to work. It is far more important than that.

Play is voluntary. You can’t make someone play or legislate play into being. A pig wearing a silly hat and jumping through a hoop isn’t playing. Play implies, pleasure, fun, and a definite lack of constraint. It’s something that comes more naturally to the young than it does to adults.

Play is almost certainly a complex collection of activities that are not just frivolous. The amount of time spent on it by young animals suggests that it is important; and a lack of it may impair the acquisition of vital social abilities. Play seems to be necessary for a healthy brain in pigs as well as people.

Recent studies are showing that taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead. Duke Medical School's Imke Kirste found that silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory. Physician Luciano Bernardi found that two-minutes of silence inserted between musical pieces proved more stabilizing to cardiovascular and respiratory systems than even the music categorized as "relaxing."

And a study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, based on a survey of 43,000 workers, concluded that the disadvantages of noise and distraction associated with open office plans outweighed anticipated, but still unproven, benefits like increasing morale and productivity boosts from unplanned interactions.

Possible Preaching Angles: These physical benefits are impressive, but for Christians there is even a deeper reason for the spiritual discipline of silence—it connects us with God.

The phrase "information overload" was popularized by Alvin Toffler in 1970. "Information overload" is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, virtual friends to pester, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend, papers to shuffle, and spouses to appease. A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge has made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third think that it has damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.

Commentators have coined a profusion of phrases to describe the anxiety and anomie caused by too much information: "data asphyxiation" (William van Winkle), "data smog" (David Shenk), "information fatigue syndrome" (David Lewis), "cognitive overload" (Eric Schmidt) and "time famine" (Leslie Perlow). Johann Hari, a British journalist, notes that there is a good reason why "wired" means both "connected to the internet" and "high, frantic, unable to concentrate."

Srinivasan S. Pillay, a psychiatrist and an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who studies burnout, surveyed a random sample of 72 senior leaders and found that nearly all of them reported at least some signs of burnout and that all of them noted at least one cause of burnout at work.

The article quoted one chief executive for a multibillion-dollar company who put it this way: "I just felt that no matter what I was doing, I was always getting pulled somewhere else. It seemed like I was always cheating someone—my company, my family, myself. I couldn't truly focus on anything.

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence. The rush and pressures of modern life are a form of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, to succumb to violence ... The frenzy of the activist ... destroys our own inner capacity for peace.

It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

—Thomas Merton

Editor's Note: Note that this was written in the 1960s, well before iPhones, the Internet, Facebook, personal computers, and the proliferation of TVs. Merton may have been underestimating the rush and pressure and "innate violence" of our age.

Half a century ago, an upholsterer from San Francisco made a curious discovery. He was called to a cardiologist's office to reupholster some chairs in the waiting room. When he looked at the furniture, he wondered immediately what was wrong with the patients. Only the front edge of the seats and the first few inches of the armrests were worn out. "People don't wear out chairs this way," he said.

Five years later, in 1959, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman began to put the pieces together. They had noticed an odd pattern shared by many of their cardiac patients, a pattern that centered on a "chronic sense of time urgency." Patients showed irritability at being made to wait in line, had difficulty relaxing, and were anxious over delays. Obsessed with not wasting a moment, they spoke quickly, interrupted often, hurried those around them, and were forever rushing. Hence the waiting room chairs: the patients sat on the edge of their seats, nervously fidgeting at the arms of the chairs as they watched time tick by.

The cardiologists called the new disease "hurry sickness."

According to Friedman, hurry sickness "arises from an insatiable desire to accomplish too much or take part in too many events in the amount of time available." The hurry-sick person is unable to acknowledge that he can do only a finite number of things. "As a consequence, he never ceases trying to 'stuff' more and more events in his constantly shrinking reserves of time."

In 1974 Colonel William Pogue became the first American to go on strike—in space. The astronaut was part of the last, and longest, manned mission aboard the Skylab space station. About halfway through the 84-day mission, Colonel Pogue and the other astronauts requested ground controllers adjust the work schedule for more rest. "We had been over-scheduled," Pogue said. "We were just hustling the whole day. The work could be tiresome and tedious, though the view as spectacular."

Ground control refused. The work was too important, they said, and time was limited. Some worried the astronauts' request was a sign of depression or physical illness. Pogue insisted neither was the case. They just wanted more time to look out the window and think, he said. Eventually the disagreement between the crew and the controllers became so intense the astronauts went on strike. Finally, a compromise was reached to give the crew more time to rest during the remaining six weeks of the flight. Pogue later wrote that having more time to look out the window at the sun and earth below also made him reflect more about himself, his crewmen, and their "human situation, instead of trying to operate like a machine."

The satirical site The Onion ran the following fictitious story titled "Man On Cusp Of Having Fun Suddenly Remembers Every Single One Of His Responsibilities." The humorous story read:

Marshall Platt, 34, came tantalizingly close to kicking back and having a good time while attending a friend's barbeque last night before remembering each and every one of his professional and personal obligations, backyard sources confirmed. While he chatted with friends over a relaxed outdoor meal, Platt was reportedly seconds away from letting go and enjoying himself when he was suddenly crushed by the full weight of work emails that still needed to be dealt with … an upcoming wedding he had yet to buy airfare for because of an unresolved issue with his Southwest Rapid Rewards account, and phone calls that needed to be returned.

Platt, who reportedly sunk into a distracted haze after coming to the razor's edge of experiencing genuine joy, fully intended to go through the motions of talking with friends and appearing to have a good time, all while he mentally shopped for a birthday present for his mother … and made a silent note to call his bank about a mysterious recurring $19 monthly fee that he had recently discovered on his credit card statement.

"Everything's fine," said the tense, mentally absent man whose girlfriend asked him what was wrong after his near-giddy buzz vanished and he remembered that he hadn't called his aunt yet to check up on her after her surgery. "I'm having fun."

According to sources, Platt tried to put his responsibility-laden thoughts out of his mind and loosen up … but suddenly remembered a magazine subscription that needed to be renewed by Friday, a medical bill he thought might now be overdue, and the fact that he needed to do laundry by tonight or he would run out of clean socks and underwear.

Dr. Susan Koven practices internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. In a Boston Globe column, she wrote:

In the past few years, I've observed an epidemic of sorts: patient after patient suffering from the same condition. The symptoms of this condition include fatigue, irritability, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, heartburn, bowel disturbances, back pain, and weight gain. There are no blood tests or X-rays diagnostic of this condition, and yet it's easy to recognize. The condition is excessive busyness.

Researchers from the University of Missouri wanted to know how subjects behaved when parted from their iPhones, so they recruited 208 students for a survey on "media usage." The researchers used the survey to screen for iPhone users and eventually recruited a group of 41 respondents for an experiment in cell phone separation anxiety. During the study, participants were placed in a cubicle and asked to perform word search puzzles. Researchers monitored their anxiety levels, heart rate, and blood pressure while the subjects had their iPhones with them.

Then, the real experiment began. Researchers told participants that their iPhones were causing interference with the blood pressure cuff and asked them to move their phones. The phones were placed in a nearby cubicle close by. Next, the researchers called the subjects' phones while they were working on the puzzle. Immediately afterwards, they collected the same data.

The results changed dramatically. Not only did the participants' puzzle performance decline significantly while the phones were off-limits, but their anxiety levels, blood pressure and heart rates skyrocketed. One of the researchers concluded, "iPhones are capable of becoming an extension of selves such as that when separated, we experience a lessing of 'self' and a negative physiological state."

So you didn't get enough sleep last night? No big deal, you say. Well, actually, it is a big deal. Sleep deprivation can have severe short-term and long-term consequences. Recent scientific studies show the problem with sleep deprivation.

According to one study, sleep-deprived people can act as dumb as someone that's drunk. In one study, researchers split volunteers into three groups. For 14 days one group slept for eight hours a night, the second group slept for six hours a night, and the third group slept just four hours a night. Cognitive tests after the two-week period showed that the people who'd gotten six hours of sleep a night showed similar reaction time as people whose blood alcohol content was at 0.1 percent—in other words, legally drunk people.

But there's another problem: Sleep-deprived people don't know they're sleep-deprived. Experts suggest that one to three percent of the population can survive on just a few hours of sleep each night. The trouble is that it's easy to think we're among these lucky few. After a long period of sleep deprivation, you stop realizing how tired you are. Studies show that such short-term sleep deprivation leads to a foggy brain, worsened vision, impaired driving, and trouble remembering. Long-term effects include obesity, insulin resistance, and heart disease. But most Americans who suffer from chronic sleep deprivation don't know it and therefore won't admit it.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Rest; Busyness; Sabbath. (2) Denial; Sinful nature—the sleep-deprived who are in denial about their deprivation act like us when we're deep in sin—we don't know it and we won't admit it.

In 2013 The New York Daily News reported that many orthopedic surgeons have noticed a disturbing trend—a serious spike in debilitating knee injuries among teenaged athletes. Dr. Frank Cordasco calls it "an epidemic." Cordasco said that he and his team are operating on 200 to 300 kids a year, unheard of even a decade ago. Since the year 2000, there has also been a fivefold increase in the number of serious shoulder and elbow injuries among youth baseball and softball players.

What's causing this epidemic of reconstructive joint surgeries? The article put the blame on one factor: the lack of rest. In other words, "The current emphasis on playing one sport all year long leaves no time for muscles and joints to recover from the microtrauma that occurs during practice and play."

But this "epidemic" isn't unique to younger athletes. In 2013, 19 Major League Baseball pitchers had Tommy John surgery—or the reconstruction of the ligament in the elbow. In the first six weeks of the 2014 season, 18 more pro pitchers have been slated for the same surgery. Again, doctors are pointing to the "overuse and no time off in the formative teen years" as the main reason for the spike in Tommy John surgeries.

Possible Preaching Angles: Sabbath; Rest; Busyness—Our bodies and our souls were not designed for overuse. All week long our bodies and souls need to recover from the "microtraumas" of life. God's gift of the Sabbath is designed to help us take the time we need to recover.

Life for a medieval peasant was no picnic. His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease, and bursts of warfare. But you might envy him for one thing: his vacation time. The Church often enforced mandatory holidays for weddings, wakes, and births. And then when wandering jugglers or sporting events came to town, peasants got more time off for quaffing beer and celebrating. In fact, economist Juliet Shor found that during periods of particularly high wages, such as 14th century England, peasants might get half the year off. Shor writes, "The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure."

In contrast, life in 21st century America doesn't look near as relaxed or leisurely. The United States is the only advanced country with no national vacation policy whatsoever. Many American workers must keep on working through public holidays, and vacation days often go unused. On average, U.S. workers end up with roughly 16 paid holiday and vacation days in a year, but that number wouldn't meet the legal minimum in most other developed countries around the world.

Possible Preaching Angles: This illustration shows our need to find balance, celebrate the Sabbath, and enjoy time with God and others—perhaps especially during holiday weekends, like Thanksgiving Day.