“I take the elevator on Sundays!”
My friend Connor shared that practice with me on a Zoom call yesterday. I was sitting in a bookstore in Tempe, and he was aboard a hospital ship docked in Ghana.
Connor is giving a year of his life to Mercy Ships, serving on the Global Mercy, the world's largest civilian hospital ship, which goes where it is needed most. Its crew of professional volunteers (surgeons, cooks, engineers, chaplains, and more) provides free surgery in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where there are only two physicians per 100,000 people.
Connor helps run the HOPE Center, where patients and their caregivers stay before and after surgery, including children facing severe physical deformities. You should check out his adventure at thecruisewithcon.com.
He has been there for almost three months, and already many volunteers who signed up for much shorter stints have come and gone. I am so proud of Connor for serving this way amid all the changes he’s facing.
He described the intensity of the work: the long hours each week and the frantic pace of trying to help as many people as possible. All day, every day, he takes the stairs. Up and down. Down and up. Over and over and over again, working, going, walking, trying to make the most of every minute to get where he needs to be.
And then, every seventh day, he changes that rhythm on purpose. He takes the elevator.
He waits. He waits in line. He waits, still and calm. He intentionally changes his pace. He slows down. He takes the elevator.
Pause right now and think about your seventh day, whether that’s Sunday or whatever day you set aside to rest.
Do you have an “I take the elevator” shift in your rhythm?
Mine is not looking at the clocks, watches, or timers around me. I take my watch off to slow down on purpose and delight in God.
Rest was never our idea. It was God’s. After six days of creating, God rested on the seventh day, and he blessed it and made it holy (Genesis 2:2–3). The God who never grows tired chose to stop, and then invited us to stop with him. Sabbath isn’t a reward for finishing everything on our list. It’s a gift we receive because we are his, not because we’ve earned it.
So let’s take the elevator together for a moment.
Set down whatever you’re holding. Take a slow breath in, and let it out even slower.
Hear God’s invitation: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Now, in the quiet, name before him one staircase you’ve been running this week. The deadline. The worry. The person you can’t stop trying to fix. Picture yourself stepping off those stairs and handing it to him.
Wait. Don’t rush to the next thing. Just sit with him for a few breaths.
Then pray something simple like this: Lord, you are God, and I am not. Thank you that the world keeps turning when I stop. Teach me to rest in you, not only on one day a week, but in the deepest places of my heart. Amen.
This week, may you find your elevator. And while you wait, may you find that God was there with you the whole time.
