The Theology of Rest Days: What Your Apple Watch Won't Tell You
I both love and loathe my Apple Watch.
I love the fitness tracking and being able to look down and answer my wife or my kids. I really like being able to shut my garage from my watch. And running without a phone, just connected to cellular, listening to a podcast…with just my watch? Come on.
But I loathe one major thing. The Rings. Those stupid rings. The judgment of those rings. It’s a contest for me. I’m always trying to close them. Even on my rest days, Sunday. I would wake up early before church every single Sunday and just do a “recovery” day. You know, a light row in the gargae. A 30 minute walk.
And then I’d be watching my rings as I mowed the lawn and did housework the rest of the day, hoping I’d close them. That turned into, “well, I can just go lift easy weight at the gym. Nobody will be the wiser. And it’ll help me grow.”
And now? Now, I haven’t taken an actual rest day in over a year.
And what’s worse, I know it. And I can’t stop. The guilt I still feel when i don’t close those stupid rings is mind-boggling.
My body needs rest. My brain NEEDS rest. It needs a day or 12 to just recoup. But I won’t let it. I need to keep filling those stupid rings.
Which is weird because…
God created everything in 6 days. Whether you believe it was a literal 6 days or 6 ages or 6 thousand years, it was created in a set amount of time. And then, God just stopped. Genesis 2:1 says that “by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (Genesis 2:2-3 NIV)
Here’s the funny part: He’s God. He’s literally infinite, with infinite energy and infinite power and infinite creatine. He didn’t HAVE to just sit down and rest. But He did. And He called the day holy?
Why?
Let me put this out there, and it’s not a ground breaking thought by any means:
He rested because He knew that we were going to be looking to Him.
See, we’re limited, finite beings. We have energy restrictions. We need to eat to convert those calories to energy so that our brains can fire and so that our muscles will work. And along the way, we just can’t keep up. You may have the best recovery plan in the world, with the best Theraguns and saunas and cold plunges and protein shake timings. But eventually you need to rest. You need to just STOP.
God knew that. And He modeled that for us.
One day of just stopping.
One day of sitting back and saying, “this is good.”
One period of time to just reflect on holiness (which is really just what God called everything He had created, “holy”).
He didn’t say, “Take a day and just fill your rings up, but make sure that it’s only done at low intensity.” He didn’t say, “Continue to tax your body but do it and call it ‘active recovery.’”
He said STOP.
For us out there who are athletes (and that’s you, by the way. You’re doing the work, you’re getting in the reps, you’re putting in the miles, you’re following the plan. Even if you’re just starting, you’re an athlete).
For those of us who are athletes, I need to you to see that stopping is where you will grow.
You will be restored and refreshed. You’ll be able to hit the gym that much harder tomorrow. You’ll be able to worship that much more today. And you’ll be able to really PLACE your priorities in life that much easier.
Today, I’m praying for you. I’m praying that you can just STOP. I’m praying that you can let the fitness tech that we really love to use just sit there.
Take the watch off.
Set the rings to the lowest you can put them.
Pause them.
Take the Garmin off and don’t worry about your body battery or HRV.
You will grow in ways that you can never imagine.
What about you?
When's the last time you took a real rest day? Reply in the comments or email me—I'd love to hear your story.