Dear Edgeboro Family & Friends,

As many of you know, I took some extended time away from the office and the pulpit in January. While that time wasn’t exactly vacation, there was still plenty of opportunities to rest. So rest has been on my mind lately. Thanks to a wonderful conversation I had a few weeks ago with some friends and colleagues of mine that I’ve gotten to know through a leadership training program I started in 2019, I was able to further explore the topic of rest.

In that conversation, I was made aware of an interesting resource. Now before I tell you what that is, I want to make you aware that I’m not a neurological expert on the topic. I’m simply sharing it because the resource got me thinking about the ways I spend my energy and the things I need to do to rest and recharge – and I hope it gets you thinking too.

The resource is a Ted Talk recorded in 2019 by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith. She proposed that there are seven types of energy we use:

Mental, Spiritual, Emotional, Social, Creative, Sensory, and Physical.

All of our actions require one or more of these types of energy. Your job might require mental and creative energy. Taking care of a family member might take physical, social, and emotional energy. Watching Netflix takes sensory energy, and perhaps mental and emotional, depending on what you’re watching. Dr. Dalton-Smith proposes that we need to rest beyond just sleeping or watching TV when we have downtime. She says that we need to rest appropriately based on the energy that we use. Is a screen in our face all day using sensory energy? Take some sensory rest by closing your eyes periodically or unplugging when you can. Are other people’s issues/problems/areas of need sapping your social and emotional energy? Find a way to spend time with by supportive and loving people. (If you’d like to learn more about how to rest in different ways, or how to recognize when you need rest, just google Saundra Dalton-Smith and “7 types of rest.”)

I find this focus on appropriate rest fascinating because this pandemic has caused us to spend so much extra energy in ways we didn’t even know. Think of how much creative energy we’ve spent reinventing things at home, work, church, and school; and sensory energy on paying attention to huge numbers in pandemic statistics; and social energy on finding boundaries as we work and learn from home. It’s no wonder why we’re all tired (of the pandemic, and in general). With so much of our energy being used in new ways, it is time we extend grace to ourselves and other and find new ways to rest in order to balance things out.

There is so much to say here about sabbath if I had more space, but instead I’ll just say this:

Rest up and rest well, because here’s the thing: we have another year ahead of us to continue being the loving, serving, good-news bearing people that God calls us to be!

With the holy energy and peace of Christ,

Pastor Dan