I Feel Guilty Sitting Down

You sat down on Sunday at about three and it lasted four minutes.

Not because anybody needed you. Nobody came in. The phone did not go. What happened was that a commentary started up, and it listed things, and by minute four the listing had won and you were on your feet doing one of them.

And here is the part that makes this an article about going outside rather than an article about rest. You are tired, and the reason you are tired is not the work. It is that you have never once stopped without paying for it.

Somebody who rests badly is more tired than somebody who does not rest at all, because they get the not working and the guilt at the same time, and the guilt costs more than the work did.

So when this site says take twenty minutes outside, what it is actually asking of you is a great deal more expensive than it looks.

Come ye yourselves apart

There is a moment in Mark where Jesus interrupts something that was going well.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31, King James Version)

Come ye yourselves apart, and rest a while.

Read the timing. The disciples have just come back from a successful mission. There is a crowd. There is genuine need in front of them, and people coming and going, and by any reasonable measure this is not the moment to stop.

And He tells them to stop.

You are looking at rest given as an instruction in the middle of real need, and it was never handed out as a reward for a finished list. Mark 6:31 puts the resting inside the busyness rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as an order rather than as an indulgence.

And notice who gives it. Not somebody who did not understand the urgency. The person who saw the crowd more clearly than any of them, looking at the same need, saying: apart, now, rest.

You have been told to stop by the one who could see the whole of it, and it was never a failure of perspective that produced that instruction. The written word gives the command from the person with the clearest view of the need, and the Spirit of God is what makes the resting obedience rather than a lapse.

What the commentary is

Now let me name the voice, because naming it is most of the defense.

It is not conscience. Conscience is specific and it stops when you deal with it. This one is not specific and it does not stop.

Notice what it does when you obey it. You get up at minute four and do the thing on the list. And then it produces another thing. It has never once run out, in about fifteen years, and a voice that never runs out is not giving you information, it is running a process.

Rest was commanded before it was earned, and staying in is not a smaller answer than going out.

You are not being convicted of anything, and it was never a true account of what needs doing. Mark 6 has rest commanded while a crowd is still standing there, which is exactly why the Spirit of God is unimpressed by a list that regenerates.

And here is the practical consequence for this site. The reason twenty minutes outside is hard for you is not the twenty minutes. It is that it is twenty minutes of not doing, and the not doing is what triggers the commentary, and you have learned to avoid it by keeping moving.

Sit outside and let it talk

So the practical part, and it is designed for this particular problem rather than for tiredness in general.

Sit down outside your own front door for ten minutes and let the commentary run without answering it.

You are able to hear it without obeying it, and it has never once required you to win an argument in order to stay seated. The passage puts the resting inside the need rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man on a step at minute five.

Outside, specifically, and not on the couch. The couch is where it is loudest, because the list is all visible from there. A step has none of the list on it.

And let it talk. Do not argue with it. Do not answer each item. Do not make a deal where you sit for ten minutes and then do two of them. Just let it list things, and stay sitting, and notice that at about minute six it gets quieter, which it has never had the chance to do.

And on the days it wins, and some days it will, let that stand and do not add anything.

You are not failing on the days you get up at minute four, and it has never once been a scoreboard that anybody was keeping. Mark 6:31 commands the rest without one condition attached to it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with a man who did not manage to stay seated today.