No Time to Rest

Mile 55.25

Last evening after dinner I visited the station for a few minutes to apply another coat of polyurethane on a few wooden items that are being finished. Afterward, I sat outside in the backyard under the trees as I often do on warm summer evenings. For about half an hour I was idle, and while I did enjoy those moments of rest, a constant nagging gnawed at me that I should get up and do something else.

“Ridiculous!” I thought. “Do I live in such a busy and hurried world that I must always do one more useless thing instead of simply relaxing and resting for a few minutes?”

How many e-mails do we really want to read? How much information do we really need to process? How many more screen changes do we really want to see and read through?  I hate rodents…yet I am enslaved to the mouse nonetheless. Something is wrong with this picture, and this too is the problem…this wrong picture is another image on a screen.

We go to work earlier and come home later and feel as if nothing has been accomplished. That may well be true because we foolishly drive ourselves through meaningless toil in unrewarding jobs that ceaselessly demands most of our life in doing unproductive tasks which have no end in purpose.

Our world has gone crazy! Today is a maddening race! We continuously rush and hurry for the unimportant and do not know how or when to slow down and stop for the truly important. Worse yet, we are becoming unable to distinguish between the two.

I have struggled with these same naggings on Sundays, feeling as if rest on the Sabbath is wrong and that I should be doing something more productive to keep busy. The Bible clearly tells me I am wrong and that my thinking has become warped.

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work.” 

(Exodus 20:8-9)

So far as I know, the God of Israel has not repealed the Fourth Commandment.

Also I wonder, “Could the prophet Daniel have foreseen life today when he saw the vision that made him so ill?”

“And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days; then I rose and went about the king’s business; but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.” (Daniel 8:27)

“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Daniel 12: 4)

Today, more than ever before, people are rushing about to and fro and knowledge is increasing.

Are you certain you know where you are going? If so, do you really want to go there?

This is life in the 21^st century and I just do not know what to make of it.

The Oddblock Station Agent
August 12, 2009