Editor’s note: Jill Hart is FRCS’s Elementary Principal.
This school year marks my 25th in education. And after all that time, I still haven’t figured out how to move through the month of May with any real sense of calm.
Every year, I tell myself I’ll do it differently, I will be more organized, more focused, more prepared. Every year, May arrives anyway, carrying its familiar whirlwind of deadlines, celebrations, decisions, and exhaustion.
But I keep trying. And lately, I’ve started to wonder if the peace I’m searching for isn’t found in better time management at all.
Maybe it’s found in Sabbath.
Sabbath is something I’ve been intentionally exploring for a while now, and honestly, I misunderstood it for most of my adult life. I viewed it as a restrictive rule, a list of things I wasn’t supposed to do. I carried guilt over any work or productivity on that day, until eventually I swung to the opposite extreme and stopped thinking about it altogether, treating it like any other day of the week.
Only recently have I begun to see it differently. Not as an obligation, but as an invitation—a gift, actually—a rhythm of rest that restores what the week has worn down. Instead of asking what I shouldn’t do, I’ve started asking a different question: What brings life to my soul?
For me, Sabbath looks like worshiping with my church family, a Sunday afternoon nap, reading a book just for the joy of it, hiking with my husband, lingering over dinner with my family on the patio. These aren’t grand gestures. They’re small, unhurried practices that remind me rest is not something I have to earn.
That might be the deeper lesson I’m still learning.
We were never meant to run on empty. Jesus says it plainly in Matthew 11:28–30:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
If this busy season feels heavy for you too, you’re not alone. I’m not writing as someone who has mastered rest. I’m writing as a fellow traveler, slowly learning how to receive it.
I’d love to invite you into this practice alongside me. Not perfectly. Just intentionally.
Sabbath reminds us that the God who made us knows exactly what we need.
And that is very good news.
