Deuteronomy 5:12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.”

According to a survey several years ago, Americans aren’t very good at taking their time off. Only about half of us will take a vacation in a given year. For one in four, it is because they don’t think they can afford it. One in eight will not use even a single vacation day their employers offer.

We may complain that Americans are losing their work ethic. But we lack a proper rest ethic as well. My friend Frank was recruited to work for a government agency. They offered him two weeks of paid vacation at first. He told them that was unacceptable. He needed at least four. “I can get my work done in eleven months,” he said. “I can’t get it done in twelve.” Frank remembered something that many people forget. Without a proper amount of time off, without a proper amount of rest, we become less efficient. We lose our creativity. We make more mistakes. We just don’t operate as well. Fortunately for Frank, his skills were in such high demand that they gave in and granted him four weeks of vacation.

It’s not just our work that suffers when we fail to get our rest. It is hard on our relationships, both because we rob them of time, and because tired people are grumpy people. Our health suffers. The list of conditions caused or made worse by sleep deprivation is a long one: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and obesity to name a few. Some say that failure to get enough sleep is one of the most serious health epidemics in our country.

Sometimes our failure to take time off for rest is unavoidable. We are called to address an urgent need at home or at work. Tonight is not the night to be in bed by nine. This is not the week to disappear for the next fourteen days.

But there are plenty of less noble reasons we cheat on our rest. Greed, a failure to be content with our current standard of living, drives us to sacrifice sleep and days off so that we can chase the dollar bills we desire. We miss the irony that our extra hours at work prevent us from having time to enjoy the things we can now afford.

Pride is another contributing factor. We put in the extra hours because we want our work to look the best, because we don’t want to be the weak one who has to ask for help, because we covet the respect that comes with the reputation for being a hard worker. And there is nothing wrong with work well done, getting it done yourself, and a work-ethic that commands the respect of our peers. But when we do it all for the cult of self to the glory of me, this isn’t a godly life. It is sinful ambition, a counterfeit of the self-sacrifice Jesus urges on those who follow him.

From the beginning, God recognized our need for rest. He built it in to his creation. From the very first day he turned the lights off for half the day, making it harder to keep on working and easier to go to sleep. He divided time into weeks of seven days, but the last day of that first week he put down his tools and stopped making things, though he himself needed no rest. Even the Almighty took a day to stop and enjoy the fruit of his work.

Then, in case his people didn’t get the hint, he included rest in his Ten Commandments. “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.” Although these words belong to his commandments, they really reflect his love for us. We are the ones who benefit from time to rest. It is healthy for our bodies. If we use the time to worship God and hear his word, it is even healthier for our souls.