-
Ron Burtz
Because of our Christmas Day snow storm this year I didn’t get to do something I always like to do on Dec. 25. Sometime during the day, I like to walk outside for a few minutes, away from the noise and chatter of Yuletide festivities and just listen. I’m not listening for anything in particular. I just enjoy the quiet of the one day a year the world almost seems to stop.
On Christmas Day there’s nobody rushing off to work or the store, the incessant semi truck traffic has all but stopped and the world seems covered with a blanket of calm. If you think about it, this doesn’t really happen any other day of the year, but on Christmas, the frantic pace of life seems to slow dramatically.
I did have a few seconds of that experience on the 26th and 27th as I was walking out of the house in the half light of 7:30 a.m. and didn’t hear any cars warming up on my street or trucks rumbling down the highway. However, it wasn’t the prolonged hush of Christmas Day... and I needed to head for work myself.
One of the reasons I enjoy this exercise is because I imagine there was a time in our national life when every Sunday was like that, at least to some extent. Because of Blue Laws, commerce pretty much ceased on the first day of the week and the day was given over to family dinners, relaxation, recreation and worship. (Think The Andy Griffith Show’s “Man In a Hurry” episode: “You people are living in another world!” – Malcolm Tucker)
If I could, I would go back to those days in a heartbeat. I think our drive to do it all and achieve it all and experience it all in this culture is killing us. And, unfortunately we even turn our holiday celebrations into occasions for excess, planning too much, spending too much and not taking time for the three Christmas R’s Jenny Reese talked about in her Extension column last week. We need to take time for rest, rejuvenation and rejoicing or we risk experiencing a fourth R (And this is my own addition) that’s not so pleasant—(w)recked!
I always have to smile when I’m in church at Christmastime singing that beautiful carol, “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.” A number of years ago the words to the third verse struck me even as I was singing them:
“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow...”
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “Sounds like a description of Christmas shopping at the mall.”
I doubt the songwriter had that exactly in mind when he wrote that lyric, but nevertheless he moves on in the next few lines to prescribe the antidote:
“Look now! for glad and golden hours, come swiftly on the wing. O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!”
I find it instructive that when God wrote down those 10 Commandments on tablets of stone and handed them to Moses, He had to order the Children of Israel to take a day off once a week.
“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work...” (Ex. 20:9-10)
Now I’m not suggesting that we get legalistic about making one day a week our sabbath. After all, Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” But I believe taking time for rest and reflection is a principle we ignore at our own peril.
Rest, relaxation, rejoicing and rejuvenation are things we have to make time for and schedule, just like we schedule all the other responsibilities in our lives or we risk suffering from illness and burnout.
I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions but if I were to make one for 2024 it would be along the lines of making a priority of taking time to sit and rest and reflect and listen for the songs of angels.
I’ll close with this. As the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, “Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength... It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.”
RON BURTZ can be reached at newsregister@hamilton.net
