{"id":4991,"date":"2025-10-27T09:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=4991"},"modified":"2025-10-27T09:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:36:18","slug":"stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/27\/stop\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

\u201cWater, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”<\/em>

Those famous words come from \u201cThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner,\u201d Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s 1798 poem in which he describes a sailor who, stranded in the middle of the ocean, is dying of thirst even while completely surrounded by water.

They are rather spectacularly misquoted in an episode of The Simpsons <\/em>when Homer finds himself adrift at sea: \u201cWater, water everywhere, so let\u2019s all have a drink!\u201d\u00a0

We all know (at least from watching Tom Hanks in Cast Away<\/em>) that human beings should never drink seawater.

For a brief moment, it satisfies.\u00a0Then it kills you.\u00a0But why?<\/em>

Only 2.7% of the Earth\u2019s supply of water is fresh.\u00a0And 90% of that is essentially unavailable to us because it\u2019s bound up in ice.

More than 97% of the world\u2019s H2<\/sub>O, in other words, is found in the oceans.\u00a0Seawater, the world over, is approximately 3% saline.\u00a0

The human body actually requires a small amount of salt to function.\u00a0We can also ingest generous amounts of salty foods from time to time, which is why the potato chip industry appears to be in no serious danger of folding any time soon.

Our kidneys have been assigned the crucial role of flushing excess salt from the body.\u00a0

But there\u2019s a problem.\u00a0The kidneys cannot make urine that is more than 2% salty.\u00a0If we continually ingest water that is 3% saline, our kidneys will need to \u201cborrow\u201d water from other parts of the body in order to dilute it.\u00a0That leads to a wicked irony:\u00a0The more seawater we drink, the more dehydrated (and thirstier) we become \u2013 leading to even more desperate gulps of seawater.

As a rule of thumb, human beings can go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three months without food.\u00a0

When people stranded on the high seas are driven insane by thirst, they may finally give in and sample the \u201cwater, water everywhere.\u201d\u00a0That puts them on a sure and certain death spiral, even as they think they might be saving themselves.\u00a0

During times of significant stress, in the workplace or at home, working harder can be like drinking seawater.

At first it satisfies.\u00a0I have so much to do.\u00a0This stress is killing me.\u00a0If I push a little harder, just for a week or two, I know I can get caught up.\u00a0<\/em>

But working harder is not the cure for \u201churry sickness,\u201d that crippling disease of the spirit that plagues so many of us.

At first it satisfies.\u00a0But then it kills us.

God\u2019s antidote is utterly countercultural:\u00a0STOP. Just stop.<\/em>

Carve out at least one daily cease-and-desist \u201cappointment,\u201d and protect it fiercely.\u00a0Find a quiet place to sit for 15 minutes and live out Psalm 46:10:\u00a0\u201cBe still and know that I am God.\u201d

Our job at such times is not to figure something out, or learn something new, or do anything at all.\u00a0Simply be still and know <\/em>that God is God, and we are not.\u00a0

In such moments it will increasingly dawn on us that we\u2019re not really thirsty, in the end, to work harder.\u00a0

We\u2019re actually thirsty for the One who made us for himself.\u00a0

And if we let him, he will ensure that we\u2019re satisfied.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u201cWater, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Those famous words come from \u201cThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner,\u201d Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s 1798 poem in which he describes a sailor who, stranded in the middle of the ocean, is dying of thirst… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4992,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1025,791,49],"class_list":["post-4991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-stress","tag-thirst","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4993,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions\/4993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}