Sin for a Season

Have you ever argued with God?  I have.  He usually wins.  Ok, fine, he always wins.  Hint:  this is a good thing...

I've had a few friends retire from their jobs lately.  They were of age, and ready to bask in the glow of the sunset years.  I'm not too terribly far away from those sunset years myself, and, like millions of similar others, horribly underprepared.  Oh, there's a plan.  It just isn't working as well as I had hoped.  My optimistically modified plan is to work myself into a late grave.

My optimistically modified plan isn't terribly pretty, and can at times wreak havoc on what has come to be my new norm, which is working constantly.  Recently, some of you have graciously sacrificed your sanity on my altar of grouse, but for the rest of you, it sounds like this:  Between my two jobs, I've only had two scheduled days off in the past three and a half months.  The burden of not having a day off, coupled with an incident that shall remain private, created a stress in me that I have not felt in many years.  A mental stress that decimated my facilities, leading to an emotional stress that consumed my sensibilities, leading to a physical stress that weighed me down, made me feel tired, made my muscles ache.  It was entirely overwhelming.  I knew it would pass eventually, but going through the process was not pleasant. 

So it stands to reason that, in my atypical state of physical fragility, I got sick.  It takes something like that to make me sick.  I honestly can't remember the last day I took time off of work for illness.  Yeah, there were all those broken collarbones a few years back...  The last time I remember staying in bed for fever or chills was my mid-twenties.  So when I called in sick for two days last week, I was shocked, yet not overly surprised.  I knew what was going on, and knew I just needed time to rest. 

As I lay on the couch, covered in a blanket, I mentioned to my wife that it was difficult to just lay there.  I'm not accustomed to inactivity.  Mostly physical activity at work, a good blend of physical and mental activity at home or out and about, with a hefty dose of overall emotional energy is my typical status du jour.  On the couch, I was attempting to shut it all down.  The prior week had been too much for my body to handle, and I needed time to just be quiet.  Out of the two days on the couch, little of it was spent doing anything.  I did yell at the computer a bit. 

I went into the bedroom to retrieve a sweatshirt, and as I was returning to the couch,
I looked upwards, and said in my heart, "I just need to work like this a little longer, then everything will be better."  And God replied, "Sin for a season.  Uh-huh." 

So I returned to work the next day, feeling fantastic, like I'd never been ill.  Its what I do.  And my schedule hasn't changed.  I get Christmas and New Year's Day off, then after that, who knows.  Memorial Day?  I know, this demand on my person is unsustainable.  And I don't want to return to the mantra of years gone by, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."  But there is a price to pay.  A toll that is taken on the person when rest is ignored.  Or maybe, declined, in favor of the dollar that will shortcut my way to a less-stressful life. 

Genesis 2:1-3 (KJV):  "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:  because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."

I have not sanctified the seventh day lately.  I instead choose to work through it, thinking that the extra effort put forth in violating the Sabbath will somehow bring me to peace and prosperity.  That somehow, justifiable sin for a season is the right path that will lead me to goodness and light.  Because this is my life, and I know how to best live it.  Uh-huh.