Thoughts on forced restfulness.

"There is more to life than merely increasing its' speed." ~ Ghandi 

"If we are terrified of what we will find in rest, we will refuse to look up from our work, refuse to stop moving.  We quickly fill all the blanks on our calendar with tasks accomplishments, errands, things to be done - anything to fill the time, the empty space." ~ Wayne Muller "Sabbath"

I am thankful for the last three days of sickness.  I don't often stop and make space for slience and rest these days.   By not stopping I realize how out of touch and distant I feel with myself and with others.  When life is consumed with work, social obligations and various forms of entertainment opportunities for solutide, silence, art, prayer, music, eating, drinking and the other things that make life beautiful are drowned out by the sea of noise that vies for my attention and begs me to consume things rather than to create them.

John Piper on being overly zealous.

"... my sense is that in the prosperous West, the danger in the church is not that there are too many overly zealous people who care too deeply about the lost, and invest hazardously in the cause of the Gospel, and ruin their lives with excessive mercy to the poor. For every careless saint who burns himself out and breaks up his family with misdirected zeal, I venture, there are a thousand who coast with the world, treating Jesus like a helpful add-on, but not as an all-satisying, all -authoritative King in the cause of love." ~ John Piper, "Don't Waste Your Life"