Labor Day weekend is for us working folk.

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day.

This holiday is for us – people who work.

As stated HERE, Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

We get a day to rest!

This summer I traveled to Alaska with my husband and took along, Garden City, by John Mark Comer. I like to pay attention to what sticks with me after I have put a book down. Today, one month later, this is what sticks:

Many people are working hard to go on vacation, yet when we return home, we are often tired instead of refreshed. This means we didn’t rest.

Turns out, when my husband and I returned home from Alaska, I promptly went to bed for about three days with a severe summer cold and cough, along with extreme fatigue. I was not fully recovered for a week. Having just read Comer’s book, I told my husband about how so many people take vacations that don’t refresh us. I looked my husband in the eye and said, “We didn’t rest.”

Our vacation wore me out.

After analyzing our work-vacation pattern versus a work-rest pattern, we booked a cabin in the woods for a weekend in the fall. We used to do so every year as a family but have let the habit slip. We show up and do nothing. We walk in the woods, read, sleep, eat, sit in a rocker on the porch, play pool as a family, go sit by a stream.

No schedule. No plan. No rush.

Natural rhythm.

After six “days” of universe-sculpting work, God rested. And in doing so, He built a rhythm into creation itself. We work for six days, and then we rest for one. And this cadence of work and rest is just as vital to our humanness as food or water or sleep or oxygen. It’s mandatory for survival, to say nothing of flourishing. (p. 188)

I’m not a machine.

I can’t work seven days a week. I’m a human. All I can do is work for six days and then rest for one, just like the God whose image I bear. (p. 188)

Take Monday off, all we who labor.

Rest.

Picture Explanation: My son was in his first triathlon. There was no prouder mom when he crossed the finish line. And when he finished? He went to the water park beside the finish line and floated in the lazy river for the rest of the afternoon. He rested.