CHANGING
THE OIL

Topics: Busyness; Health; Rest; Sabbath; Stress; Weariness; Work

References: Genesis 2:1–3; Exodus 20:8–11; Psalm 23:2–3; Matthew 11:28; Mark 6:31; Hebrews 4:9–11

A few years ago, I got a call from a girl in my department who said her car had broken down and left her stranded about two miles from the office. So I drove over there and found her leaning against her car, looking flustered.

I asked what happened.

“Well, I was just driving down the road, and the car quit running,” she said.

“Could you be out of gas?” I asked.

“No, I just filled it up.”

Well, that one question pretty well exhausted my automotive diagnostic abilities, but I persisted. “What happened? Did it make any noise?”

“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “As I was driving down the hill, it went brump, brump, brump, POW!”

I asked, “When was the last time you changed the oil?”

She said, “Oil?” As it turned out, she had owned the car for a year and a half and had never changed the oil.

I get that same look when I ask frazzled friends, “When was the last time you took a Sabbath rest?”

—David Slagle, Atlanta, Georgia