It’s finally summer!
Aaaahh! I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad it’s summer. Every semester of every school year I feel like I “leave it all in the classroom” –doing my best to teach each of my students, grade them fairly and thoroughly, and make myself available for any student who is willing to reach out for help. But that was especially true for me this year. I taught an overload each semester, meaning instead of teaching the contractual four classes, I taught five, in the fall and in the spring. In addition to teaching, I served on two search committees, which are committees formed to hire new faculty, and I worked with students on their research—first as an advisor for a Master’s thesis and then as a faculty mentor for students preparing research proposals.
With that work in mind, I’ve begun to think about the lines between working hard and overworking. I don’t want to do the latter, but I have no problem with the former. God called us to work (Gen 2:15) and to “work heartily” as the bible instructs us in Colossians 3:23. In fact, when we work, we are mimicking God. God is a creator who made the architecture of the galaxy, this planet, and the creatures within it, but God knew when to rest (2:1-3).
I don’t want to overwork. Why? Because overworking creates an imbalance in my life where I neglect my relationships and my rest. Inevitably, when my relationships and rest are lacking, I start to feel the negative effects in my body (through aches and injury) and in my mind—through unstable emotions and mental fatigue. Ecclesiastes 2:22-24 is a good reminder of what happens when we do not rest: “For all his days are sorrowful and his work burdensome. Even in the night he takes no rest.” So I’m evaluating myself by asking what makes me want to overwork. I’m also asking myself what norms and habits I need to put in my life to ensure I don’t overwork. It will take me a while, probably all summer, to find all the answers to those questions, but one good habit was easy to pinpoint. I learned as a teenager (thank you Jesus), the value of going to church.
When coming at it newly as an adult, church can seem like an interruption in your work routine, but, viewing it from the perspective of creating healthy habits, church is an invitation to rest at least once or (for me) twice a week—to rest away from philosophies that war against God’s point-of-view and to rest from work in a physical sense. I get up from my computer, I drive away from my place of work (even if it’s my home) and I enter a place that exists to worship God. I can sit in the presence of God or I can stand and sway to music that enlarges God in my mind—making this world and the problems within it seem smaller and more in focus.
I hope you will join me in pulling away from work this summer to lean into relationships and rest. If you’ve got workaholic tendencies like me, let me encourage you to see that rest is necessary. You will come back to your work refreshed when you take a break. And your deep relationships with friends and family are what will sustain you when work gets hard and people disappoint you.
