Most of us don’t reject rest outright.
We postpone it.
We tell ourselves we’ll rest after one more thing is done—after the list gets shorter, after life slows down, after we’ve earned it. Rest becomes conditional, something we imagine waiting patiently on the other side of our productivity. And yet, that “other side” never quite arrives.
Busyness has a way of disguising itself as virtue. It can look like responsibility, dedication, even love. We don’t usually say, I don’t need rest. More often, we say, not today.
Yesterday was one of those days for me.
Over the past year, a lot has changed in my life. One of the biggest changes is that I moved from being the pastor of one church to serving a new one. I love the church I’m now serving, and at the same time, it’s larger, busier, and filled with people I’m still getting to know. There are more moving pieces, more expectations, more demands on my attention.
Add to that the reality that we’ve just come out of one of the busiest seasons of the year, and it’s no surprise that my schedule has felt full—sometimes overly full.
Monday afternoons are usually set aside for recording podcasts. I record both the Infinitely Precious Podcast and the Dulin Weekly Podcast in that window, along with editing, uploading, and preparing summaries. Yesterday, after a very full morning at the office, I came home a little later than planned and sat down in what I call my “spiritual chair”—the chair where I sit each morning for meditation.
And sitting there, with time pressing in and responsibilities waiting, I realized something simple and honest: before I did anything else, I needed to rest.
Not later. Not after the work was done. Right then.
So I sat. I let go. I returned to my breath. I gave myself a twenty-minute meditative sit. And when that ended, I realized I needed more than a brief pause. I needed space.
As busy as the schedule was, I gave myself the rest of the afternoon—not to accomplish anything, not to catch up, but simply to be. I drank a cup of coffee. I looked out the window. I read. I journaled. I rested.
I didn’t even realize how deeply I needed it until I allowed myself to take it.
I was, in my own mind, too busy to rest. But my body and my spirit were telling me otherwise. And once I stopped resisting that truth, it became clear: there was no time for rest—and that was exactly why I needed it most.
I didn’t rest because everything was finished.
I rested because I wasn’t finished.
And that was the point.
Rest changed the tone of the entire evening. When I went to bed that night, I found myself able to lay down the things that were undone. I repeated a simple truth to myself: I’ve done all I can do. Whatever remains will either get done tomorrow or not at all—and that’s okay.
I am limited.
And those limits are not a failure.
So often we imagine that rest is something we do once life is under control. But if we’re honest, life was never fully under our control to begin with. Schedules shift. Needs arise. Interruptions come. And rest becomes one way of letting go of the illusion that everything depends on us.
Busyness often shields us from feeling our limits. We want to believe we are inexhaustible, indispensable, always capable of more. But rest gently returns us to the truth: we are finite—and that finiteness is part of the gift.
Taking rest is not a failure. It is, in many ways, a success. It is a way of staying human.
The ancient creation story in Genesis tells us that even the divine rests. Not because the work was flawed or incomplete, but because rest is woven into the rhythm of life itself. I observe a weekly Sabbath, and most of the time I honor it carefully. But I’ve learned that rest can’t always be confined to one day. Sometimes it needs to be taken in the middle of a crowded week, right when it feels least convenient.
What are we afraid will happen if we rest?
That we’ll disappoint someone? That things will fall apart? That we’ll be revealed as less competent than we imagine ourselves to be? There’s a subtle belief that if we stop, everything will stop with us.
But the truth is this: we are infinitely precious, not because we are indispensable, but because we are a gift. Unique. Beloved. Finite.
God does not need our exhaustion.
The world is not held together by our overfunctioning.
Rest is not abandonment—it is trust.
So I want to invite you to rest. Even if your schedule says there’s no time for it. Especially then.
Can you find five minutes today? Not to scroll, not to produce, not to optimize—but simply to be. To breathe. To remember that you don’t have to earn rest. It is already given.
As you breathe, you might gently say to yourself: I don’t have to earn this.
Because you don’t.
You are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And you are allowed to rest.
Infinitely Precious 