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Every so often, my cell phone gives me a message that it needs to be charged. After what happened the other day, I found myself wishing something would notify me when I need to pause and recharge.

What happened was that I lost my temper and snapped at some people. They must have wondered what on earth was wrong with me. All they did was explain why something would not be done the way I had suggested. And there I was stomping away from them, furious, for no visible reason.

And my anger really had nothing to do with them, I realized later. I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed by my life right then and took their comments in the most negative way possible. It didn’t help that several other times that day someone had dismissed my ideas in a similar brusque way. But that is no excuse. My behavior is all on me.

I have one thing in common with the apostle Paul. “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” he wrote in Romans 7:15. I have so often lamented over this very thing!

But when I read farther, Paul gives me hope. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me?” he asked, and immediately answered himself, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

God is an endless source of power. But like my cell phone, that power doesn’t do me any good if I don’t plug into it when needed. When I look through his Word, I see that he tried to tell me this. He said I should stop all my busyness and rest every seventh day. Jesus said that when I feel weary and heavy-laden, I should go to him and he will give me rest.

My morning Bible time doesn’t always count as that. Too many times I hurry through it so I can get on with the other things on my agenda for that day. And in my busyness, I don’t spend any time thinking about what I read that morning.

And “busyness” seems to be a common problem in our society. If I am just sitting, I start to feel guilty, thinking I ought to be accomplishing something. Something besides reading or whatever else I am doing that most people wouldn’t count as “productive.”

But I recently got a different perspective from a saying I had never heard before in a book I was reading: Time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted. God didn’t decree a day of rest merely as a duty. It’s supposed to be a day I enjoy. He wants me to enjoy my life. So time spent resting — recharging my battery — is not really time wasted. Not if I really do stop and enjoy my recharging time.

I need to remember that God doesn’t want me to be miserable. He wants me to be happy. Love, joy and peace are the first three fruits of the Spirit that Paul lists. And those come only through my connection with God. I lose them when I become disconnected.

Now that I think about it, I realize that even Jesus took time to recharge. The Bible mentions several times him going off alone to pray. So if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go fix a cup of tea now and spend some time chatting with God about my day.