Spending time with our adult children to celebrate mine and my husband’s birthdays was wonderful and exhausting! We tried to cram as much of Fall into three days as we could …

From The Upper Room daily devotional emails:

Today’s Reflection

IN CARING FOR OTHERS we use up a great deal of physical and mental energy. If we do not replenish these limited resources, we run the risk of compassion fatigue. We cannot fulfill our God-given callings to be compassionate human beings in bodies that are constantly neglected and overextended. How we feed, exercise, relax, listen to, and nourish our bodies are matters relevant to faithful discipleship. As Francis of Assisi lay dying, someone asked if he would have changed anything in his ministry. Significantly he responded, “I would have been more kind to my body.”

—Trevor Hudson, A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion (Upper Room Books, 2005)

Today’s Question

What do you do to relax and rejuvenate? Share your thoughts.

Today’s Scripture

“You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.”
—1 Thessalonians 2:9 (NRSV)

Prayer for the Week

Give me the eyes to see when others hurt, the ears to hear when others cry, and the courage to bring light into their darkness.

 

WE ARE NO GOOD TO OTHERS IF WE AREN’T GOOD TO OURSELVES….but, we must learn how to take care of ourselves, not simply to indulge ourselves.