The start of a new year is a good time to think about new goals.

Goals keep us busy. Goals give us direction and motivation. Goals help us to gain a sense of accomplishment.

But I have an odd suggestion for your list of goals this year. It will almost sound like an anti-goal.

Rest. Make one of your goals for this year rest. I don’t mean sleep, though it can include that. I mean rest. Time where you power down your engine and entire a period of restoration.

Of course, like God in Genesis, this means stepping away from work – from things that hurry and harry you. You need, from time to time, to put your tools down and look on the things you have done and see the good in them. And God gave that to us in the form of the Sabbath.

But rest is more than inaction. It is also the meditative and quiet contemplation our minds and bodies need to recenter themselves.

There really isn’t one place in the Bible where God commands this of us, but we see it to be true of many prophets, priests, and kings. Many figures like Moses or Samuel had times of quiet prayer. David produced page after page of hymns and prayers in the book of Psalms that you can use in your own times of contemplation if you need help finding the words. And even Jesus would go away for periods of quiet time

So schedule that time, and make it sacred, in which you can care for both body and soul with an oh, so important time of rest.