Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread.

Today's reading titled The Reason to Rest was written by Kirsten Holmberg.

If you want to live longer, take a vacation.

Forty years after a study of middle-aged male executives who each had

a risk of heart disease, researchers in Helsinki, Finland, followed up with their study

participants. The scientists discovered something they hadn't been looking for in their original

findings. The death rate was lower among those who had taken time off for

vacations. Work is a necessary part of life, a part God appointed to us even before our relationship

with him was fractured in Genesis 3. Solomon wrote of the seeming meaninglessness of work

experienced by those not working for God's honor,

recognizing its anxious striving and grief and pain.

Even when they're not actively working,

he says their minds do not rest because they're thinking about what still needs to be done.

We too might at times feel like we're chasing after the

wind and grow frustrated by our inability to finish our work. But when we remember that God is

part of our labor, our purpose, we can both work hard and take time to rest. We can trust him to be

our provider, for he's the giver of all things. Solomon

acknowledges in Ecclesiastes 22 that without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? Perhaps by

reminding ourselves of that truth, we can work diligently for him and also allow ourselves times of rest.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Ecclesiastes chapter 2 verses 17 through 26.

So I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.

All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for

...