I found these words in a post entitled A Time to Rest and Reflect by John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon:

While we often do not take the Sabbath as a special day of rest and worship, I suggest that this fact might be symptomatic of our general busyness. As I have lately considered my own weekly routine, I notice that three things monopolize nearly all of my waking hours. Each of the three is an important, valuable endeavor, and two of them are even acts of giving to others. Surely I do well to do these things, right? There is no need to give up one of them, is there? In fact, would I not be sinning by decreasing my involvement at my local church? Would it not be wrong of me to lay down my role in the children’s ministry, when the task is vital for the nurturing of the next generation and might not get done as well or at all without my efforts (just an example—my contribution is not so decisive as that in reality)? At first glance, it seems the answer is yes—it would be selfish and perhaps sinful not to serve in whatever capacity I can. After all, if I weren’t serving in the children’s ministry or the soup kitchen or the adult literacy program or some other important service to other people, what would I be doing? Napping? Reading a book in the park? Strolling along the river listening to the Fenway crowd cheer? Surely I should sacrifice those simple (but ultimately selfish) pleasures for the sake of service to others.

But the danger in our busyness, even in the (rare) case that all our activities are valuable and others-centered, is that we do not have time to fellowship with our Creator. We are so busy preaching the Gospel that we do not have the time to develop intimacy with the Author and Finisher of our faith. We do not have the time to ponder deep issues of the mind and heart. We do not have the time to sit still and listen to what the Spirit of God may want to say to us. I fear that in the end, then, even our service to others will suffer by doing too much of it.

I tend to take time to read and think because I don’t believe I can live and remain sane without it. Engineer Husband, on the other hand, craves time to read and reflect, but seldom takes it. He is driven, I think, by his mother’s oft-repeated instruction, “Do something useful!” I am going to try to encourage him to take Sunday afternoons (or maybe Saturday mornings), at least, to read and think and pray and rest. He needs it, but it will be a matter of discipline for him.