It’s summer and with it comes a chance to change things around, to do things a bit differently, to live out of the ordinary, to REST! I fear that if I don’t take this time then in a blink fall colors will roll in and I’ll scream up to the trees and the heavens – “It’s too soon! Give me back summer!” To this end I have compiled some quotes on rest – so today, a Thursday and the end of the week for many – may you bask in these quotes and take them to heart.
Life is too short to go crazy with busy.
“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” ― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
Busy has become like a security blanket. We wrap it tightly around us so that we can justify our existence. from The Security Blanket of Busy
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” ― John Lubbock, The Use Of Life
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” C.S. Lewis
“I think I need some idle moments. In idle moments I can step back and “see the whole” not just the fragmented parts. In idle moments I can gain wisdom and a heart for people. In idle moments I can hear God.” – from In Praise of Idle Moments
“Because the culture we breathe and work in rushes against rest. It equates our worth with production and wealth and fame. The more we work toward those goals, the more society assigns us worth.” ― Mary E. DeMuth, Everything: What You Give and What You Gain to Become Like Jesus
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” ― Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine
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Marilyn R. Gardner 
Thank you for these. We have struggled with this while being in the ministry. Seemed like we worked 7 days and lost the ability to come away and rest without the feeling of guilt. Now it just moves fro 5 day work week to catching up on work at home over the weekends just to begin again. But Saturday mornings I chose to linger over a catching up on your posts and others and the Word with a good cup of coffee to savor. Need to be creative and plan something for the early evening that would be this rest for Tom and I.
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A wise old country preacher once said, “We need to come apart before we fall apart.”
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Wow- LOVE this!
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I need some rest…thick and deep. The thought that it’s hard to imagine any on the horizon erodes my hope. Double sigh. Grace to you. Grace to me. Grace to all of us.
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Me too dear friend! Me too. Grace to you in your boxes.
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These are marvelous quotes, so full of wisdom. The one from John Lubbock especially spoke to me. I remember my own childhood when the hot summers seemed to stretch on forever. And we did just what he described – we would lie in the grass and look at the clouds, seeing all kinds of pictures in them. I had a special tree out in Grandpa’s woods. I could climb up onto my special seat in the branches, and read or just listen to the sounds of life all around me. I wonder if kids now have this. Their lives seem so scheduled and organized. And would it be safe? It seems like a lost world, a time gone forever. I think at our Eight-Acre Woods we tried to create that kind of place for our own grandchildren – space and time in a safe and secure place.
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I love this description and your desire for 8-acre woods came true 10 fold. It is significant that so many of your grandchildren chose to write essays for college applications and English classes about 8-acre woods. Thank you.
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