Rushing, hurrying, having plans — it’s all I know. If my time is not filled up with a plethora of assignments, jobs (I have three), and socializing, what really makes me a person of meaning in our society? Or, what really makes me a person of meaning to myself? 

Over the past few months I have been working a seasonal part-time job, with mostly high schoolers as my co-workers. In the meantime, my boyfriend was working 50 hour weeks at a factory alongside other adults, waking up at 4:00 am and spending the rest of his time outside of work at the gym and making meals. 

As this became my life, I began to view productivity as a highly esteemed virtue, and I felt I just wasn’t meeting the mark. Who did I think I was to only work eight hours a day instead of 10? And what was I to do with a day off other than flood my time with other self-proclaimed “productive” habits? I was jealous of my boyfriend for doing more than me, and in turn, I determined that I was a creature of sloth and laziness. 

At the start of the semester, as I speed-walked out of my poetry class at 12:05 to drive to work in 15 minutes, it hit me: I had equated my worth to my productivity. I had convinced myself that I had no purpose beyond what I put out into the world. 

I got exactly what my heart had been longing for: I was consumed with my time meaning something, and I finally held it in the palm of my hands. I was taking four classes, working 20 hours a week (that’s five days) and spending all my free time on homework. I didn’t have any time to allocate to two of my three jobs, and I neglected my friends and my boyfriend. I didn’t wake up in time to go to church, and I barely skimmed through a chapter of my Bible a day. 

This tiresome list of how I spent my time doesn’t sound all that great in retrospect, but I used to idealize a state of constant busyness as how I should live my life. I praised productivity, and God eventually allowed me to have my idol all to myself.

The conviction that I had made productivity an idol in my life came as a small realization from the Holy Spirit, but it soon flooded into my life through the physical and mental strain on myself and my relationships. I had excessive burnout and no time for date nights or quality time, for calling my parents or my best friend or for seeing anyone outside of completing assignments. I became a shell of who I thought I was. 

We are not created for excess. The seven deadly sins — pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth — occur when we move from the mundane to a state of overconsumption. The Lord doesn’t tell us we shouldn’t eat; rather He tells us to eat only what is needed for the day, our manna and our quail. It becomes sinful when we step into the world of overindulgence.

This is why we are called to Sabbath. Jesus explains to the Pharisees in Mark 2:27 that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” In this passage, Jesus is saying that because of the nature of our embodiment, we were created with the necessity for rest, and that only He has lordship over the Sabbath. We are called to rest in Christ alone. 

If Jesus is truly Lord of the Sabbath, how can we allow him to be Lord of our lives if we don’t respect the gift of renewal and refreshment that we have been created to nourish our souls with? 

For now, I am on an expedition to eliminate overindulgence. I am continually a work-in-progress, clay in my Creator’s hand. If God made me for manna and quail, I seek only to satiate myself with that very same manna and quail.