"And on the Seventh Day..."

I’ve now encountered the same theme from several places: rest—and getting away from everything—is critical.

First, from the business world:

“So many managers and CEOs are consumed by the pressures of managing the present, which is really managing the past. It’s easy and it’s mind-numbing. I encourage people to set aside time, away from the office, to work on strategy. In India recently, I heard Bill Gates tell an audience that he takes a week, twice a year, to go off and think and read. You’ve got to have a quiet place to think and see what bubbles up. If you’re focused only on today, you aren’t inventing the future. This is a survival issue. The 21st century will reward managers and leaders who take time to rekindle their imaginations, stimulate creativity in others, and foster an environment that embeds innovation into the company’s culture.”

—Robert B. Tucker, in an interview Innovation points the way to growth (pdf file)

Secondly, from the spiritual world, as I received a copy of Pete Briscoe’s book Secrets from the Treadmill for Christmas:

“Sabbath Rest is a term foreign to our progressive thought. Yet we are drawn to such an idea, as though it were an exhibit in a museum, a masterwork we are not allowed to touch. We have rewritten God’s design for humanity, which inherently contains a time for rest, and then called the rewriting of His architecture God-pleasing.
Having lived most of my life in overdrive, I had reached a point of dryness and exhaustion. Wisdom dictated that I take a two-month leave from the pulpit—a sabbath rest. It was a decision that opened a fresh stream of thought into the desert of my life.”

—Pete Briscoe, Secrets from the Treadmill: Discover God’s Rest in the Busyness of Life

Now ask me if I’ve had time to read more than the first chapter…!