We're just back from a very relaxing 10 days away with family. Unfortunately it coincided with Samson being on leave too, so our staff and leaders have to cover all sorts of practical tasks in our absence - thank you to all who have stepped up and helped out!
While away, I enjoyed reading Ryan Holiday's little book "Discipline is Destiny: the Power of Self-Control", which reflects on the virtue of temperance through the eyes of the ancient Stoic philosophers. Holiday talks about the freedom that flows from a life of self-control and illustrates this through the stories of many ordinary people who lived remarkable lives through consistently making disciplined decisions each day.
At the same time, I have been reading through the book of Exodus and I'm struck by the centrality of the sabbath laws for the Jewish people. There is a time to work and a time to stop and both require a measure of self-control, don't they?