Through the whole season of Lent, I work on answering the question, “What am I giving up for Lent.”

A friend told me recently, “I’m simply frazzled.” Now, when a minister says “frazzled,” my imagination goes straight to cartoon mode. I pictured him with his hair standing straight up, soot on his face, clutching a smoldering Bible in one hand while trying to answer a phone call and a text message with the other. Ministry does that to us. Then I looked at my own calendar—those blank spaces I had optimistically filled in with “rest”—and I understood exactly what he meant.

There’s an old saying: “I’m so busy I don’t know if I’ve found a rope or lost a horse. “Some days, that feels less like a saying and more like a spiritual condition.

Our culture practically demands frazzled, frenetic activity. If we’re going to play the game, we’re expected to check email, Facebook, Instagram, and X like we’re on some sort of digital scavenger hunt. I left Facebook, I never tweeted, and my computer only checks email a couple of times a day. I do peek at Instagram—because that’s where my family hangs out—but even that can feel like a part-time job.

Maybe a good Lenten discipline would be to give up the tyranny of the immediate. If it doesn’t get done today, I’ll get to it tomorrow. And if it’s still sitting there tomorrow, maybe it didn’t need doing in the first place.

Now, I’m not suggesting you shirk your responsibilities. I’m suggesting we learn something about living for the long run, something our souls have been trying to tell us while we’ve been too busy checking notifications.

God took the seventh day off. You, however, will not—because I know you. So let me offer a substitute: two peace pockets a day.

A peace pocket is a ten-minute break where you turn off the phone, turn off the computer monitor, close the door, and do absolutely nothing. If anyone asks, tell them you’re about to “work very hard for the next ten minutes on doing nothing.” Only we could turn rest into a job description.

If you can’t take a day off, take two peace pockets and call me later.

We spend so much time ruminating over trifles. The disciples once “lost” Jesus—not because He was lost, but because they were. They finally found Him praying alone. Breathless, they announced, “The whole town is looking for you!” Jesus calmly replied that He had other places to go. In other words: “I’m not ruled by your urgency.”

Jesus had priorities. He didn’t let the trivial masquerade as the essential.

If God rested and Jesus set priorities, maybe we should take the hint. Maybe Lent is the perfect time to let go of the things that make us feel frazzled, frantic, and spiritually threadbare.

Then, perhaps, we can finally decide whether we’ve found a rope or lost a horse.