Before we get into today’s reflection, I need to show you something rather wonderful.
We have officially reached 3 percent paid support.
A portion of all proceeds will be used to purchase treats for Figgy.
To everyone who stepped forward and became a paid subscriber, thank you. Your response has given me greater confidence to continue investing in the podcast, improving its production, and building Message From the Margins into something that can endure.
And apparently the investment is beginning to bear fruit. I was just informed that the Message From the Margins podcast reached number 68 in Christianity on Apple Podcasts.
In Norway.
Yes, Norway.
All of Scandinavia may not yet be breathlessly discussing Father Rich, but I see no reason to burden ourselves with unnecessary technicalities. We charted internationally. I will accept the movement of the Holy Spirit wherever God chooses to begin.
More importantly, Kathy recently left this note saying what this work means to her:
“Your work is vitally important for this moment. We are all searching for answers and your work takes us deeper into what it means to be a real Christian.”
We are doing so much more than creating a cute newsletter, although I remain entirely in favor of cute newsletters in principle. We are building a ministry that helps people encounter Scripture, think seriously about their faith, and follow Christ in a world that has become very good at using His name while ignoring nearly everything He taught.
There is more work ahead, so let’s keep building it together. You provide the funds, suggestions, comments, and shares. The Holy Spirit will provide the inspiration, and Father will keep cranking away.
Although, as today’s reflection will make painfully clear, Father may occasionally need to stop cranking.
If you can help us move towards 10% contributing support today, I’d greatly greatly appreciate it.
Yours In Christ,
The Holiness of Rest
We spent 250 years building a free society, only to chain ourselves to a desk.
Before we go any further, I should confess that everything that follows will be delivered with a truly magnificent degree of hypocrisy.
I fully intend to spend most of Labor Day weekend creating the third episode of the Message From the Margins podcast. I will be researching, writing, recording, editing, and fussing over details nearly no one else will notice. Apparently, my plan for honoring the dignity of labor is to perform a great deal of it.
So please understand that I am not writing from the mountaintop of spiritual mastery. I am writing because I need to hear this at least as much as anyone reading it.
We have spent 250 years insisting that we are a free people, only to chain ourselves to desks, place an overseer in our pockets, and enable notifications so he can reach us during dinner.
Nobody needs to deprive many of us of rest anymore. We do it ourselves.
We cannot simply take a walk. We must count the steps. We cannot enjoy a hobby for very long before wondering whether we could monetize it. We go on vacation with an itinerary that makes the Normandy invasion look casually organized, and then spend the flight home answering the emails we were supposedly escaping.
Even sleep has become competitive. We wake up, consult a tiny machine strapped to our wrist, and allow it to inform us that we rested incorrectly.
Then, once a year, the nation gives us Labor Day, a holiday dedicated to honoring workers. Naturally, we celebrate by answering emails, mowing the lawn, fighting traffic, shopping the sales, and attempting to squeeze three months of neglected household projects into seventy-two hours.
We have turned leisure into another job.
Of course, not everyone is being driven by an inability to put down the phone. Many people are exhausted because the work that once required three people has been assigned to one, and somehow that one person is expected to regard the deal as an opportunity to go above and beyond.
I have gotten to know a great many of you over this past year. I know there are college professors reading this, along with doctors, nurses, schoolteachers, clergy, engineers, small-business owners, and more than a few people cobbling together three or four jobs because one job no longer keeps the lights on.
Father is just worldly enough to know what is happening in your lives.
I know what has happened in higher education over the last five years. More is expected of you, while the security of your positions seems to recede further into the distance. You teach and advise, serve on committees, publish what you are expected to publish, and wonder whether the institution will still have a place for you next semester. Then some bucktoothed right-wing podcaster gets put into a position of high power in the federal government and determines “History Departments are “Woke” let’s get rid of them.”
I know doctors who finish seeing patients and then spend half the night catching up on notes, while some enormous healthcare conglomerate concludes that the real problem is their regrettable habit of spending too much time caring for sick people.
I know nurses who arrive at the hospital and discover that the unit is three experienced nurses short again. There are still just as many patients, of course. So you take the extra beds, pray nothing goes terribly wrong, and carry the moral weight of knowing that people deserve more attention than you have been given the time or staff to provide.
I know schoolteachers who have just spent another $300 of their own money preparing classrooms for children they have not even met yet. Then, after teaching all day and grading papers at night, some of you report to a second job because your community praises teachers far more reliably than it pays them.
And please do not get me started on ministry in 2026.
A priest is expected to be a shepherd of souls, building engineer, fundraiser, graphic designer, marketer, livestream technician, social worker, and occasional MMA referee. Once you have mastered all of that, the bishop calls with wonderful news: you are receiving two additional parishes with no additional pay.
I see it. I see what is being asked of you.
And now Father is going to look you directly in the eyes and say, “Be sure to rest. It’s Labor Day.”
I know. Some of you probably want to come at me with a two-by-four.
You would love to rest. What you lack is not permission. You lack another nurse on the unit. You lack an evening without medical charts. You lack a salary that covers the cost of being alive. You lack someone to take the second parish, an employer who respects the end of the workday, or enough money to turn down the fourth shift.
A priest telling you to practice better self-care does not solve any of that. Frankly, it may make you feel as though exhaustion is one more thing you are handling incorrectly.
Scripture does something far more serious than recommend rest.
God places it in the law.
The Bible begins with God resting on the seventh day. He does not rest because creating the platypus took more out of Him than expected. God rests because rest belongs within the goodness of creation. Before humanity has built a city, planted a crop, or produced anything of measurable value, God blesses the act of stopping.
Later, the Sabbath commandment is given to people who had been enslaved under Pharaoh. Their worth had been measured in bricks. When Pharaoh wanted more production, he withheld the straw they needed and demanded the same quota anyway. Their exhaustion was of no concern to him. Pharaoh cared about bricks.
God delivered them from that system and commanded them to rest.
In Deuteronomy, God ties Sabbath directly to their liberation: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” The whole community must stop. Children rest. Servants rest. Foreigners rest. Even the animals are protected from labor.
God does not merely give individuals permission to take a break. He constructs a society in which the people with the least power are protected from someone else’s appetite for more bricks.
That is deeply important.
Rest is holy, which means it cannot remain a luxury reserved for people wealthy enough to purchase it. If we believe workers possess God-given dignity, then we must create homes, churches, workplaces, and economies in which human beings are actually allowed to stop.
Jesus understood this human need. He withdrew from the crowds. He slept. When His disciples returned exhausted from their work, He told them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
He did not recommend a productivity seminar. He saw that they were tired, and He cared.
I know how easily meaningful work becomes all-consuming. There is always one more improvement I could make to the podcast, one more piece I could write, one more video I could record. The work is good, I love doing it, and that makes stopping even harder.
But I was beloved by God before I produced anything. So were you.
Our lives cannot be reduced to bricks, billable hours, patient charts, published papers, completed lesson plans, or podcast downloads. There must be hours in which we receive life without attempting to justify our place in it.
Which brings me back to my Labor Day weekend.
My family is planning a Saturday barbecue on Fire Island. Perhaps, if I work really, really hard today, finish enough of the podcast, answer enough emails, and cross enough things off my list, I can allow myself to go.
Did you hear it?
I nearly did it again.
Even after writing an entire reflection about the holiness of rest, I am still trying to earn it. I am still attempting to prove that I have produced enough bricks for Pharaoh before asking permission to leave the brickyard.
So let me try that again.
The podcast can wait for a few hours. The work will still be here when I return. I am going to the barbecue with my family because I love them, because this particular Saturday will never come again, and because sometimes the holiest thing a person can do is stop working and receive the life God has already given him.
At least, that is the plan.
We’ll see.
And Now It’s Your Turn
Do you have any exciting plans for Labor Day Weekend?
What has work been asking of you lately?
What would genuine rest look like for you this Labor Day weekend, and what would need to change in your life or workplace for that rest to become possible?
Tell us in the comments. There are professors, doctors, nurses, teachers, clergy, caregivers, hourly workers, and overextended human beings of every description gathered here. Someone else may need to hear that they are not the only person struggling beneath an unreasonable load.
If someone you love has been running on fumes and apologizing for being tired, please send this reflection to them. They may need permission to stop producing bricks for a few hours.
Reaching 3 percent paid support is a meaningful step forward, and I am enormously grateful to everyone who helped us get here. Our sustainability goal remains 10 percent. If one in every ten readers supports this work financially, Message From the Margins will have the resources to keep improving the podcast, create more ambitious theological work, remain independent from intrusive advertising, and carry this ministry much farther.
Nearly everything here will remain free because I will not place the Gospel behind a paywall. If you have room to become a paid subscriber, I would be deeply grateful if you joined us today. If money is tight, please receive this without a trace of guilt. Your reading, prayers, comments, and shares are real contributions to this ministry.
Some of you also asked for a way to make a one-time gift without beginning another subscription. That option is now available as well, and I remain rather overwhelmed that you wanted it.
We have reached 3 percent. Now, together, let’s keep building.