We were not made to be connected to everything all the time.

We were not made to have unfettered, infinite access to every communal thought and scrap of knowledge the human race has aggregated throughout its existence.

We were not made to process unending streams of data and opinion and color and sound and emotion.

We cannot do what God does.

But here we are. We have the Internet, and the Internet has us—this Frankensteined approximation of a boundless, all-knowing mind. It’s everything. All of it. All stitched together in increasingly obtuse ways, all theoretically accessible but realistically unknowable. It’s incomplete and imperfect and it’s still too much—a constant strain on our nervous system and mental limits.

We cannot do even a fraction of what God does.

You weren’t meant to be connected to all of that, to try and process all of that, to access and be accessed by everyone, everything, all the time.

It’s too much. Far too much. And yet it’s demanded of us. Every aspect of your life, bundled into disparate digital ecosystems, each with different rules and passwords and expectations and milieus and zeitgeists, each evolving and tugging at the others in unexpected ways. It’s how the world works. It’s how we must engage if we want to survive and function.

Can’t you feel the strain of it all? The constant tug? The constant demand to be connected, to be in the loop, to be logged in?

After the twelve came back from their journeys, Jesus told them, “‘Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’ For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat” (Mark 6:31).

Many coming and going. No time, no time, no time.

It feels familiar. But I think we’re running out of deserted places. Running out of places to go and rest.

The word for “deserted,” erēmos, means something that’s isolated, abandoned, or unfrequented by others. There are buildings and devices and appliances, all blocking out the isolated places. All connected. Always on.

In a digital world, we have to create the deserted places ourselves. Push the button, flip the switch, pull the plug. Shut down the things that connect us beyond our limits and rest with God.

We can’t stay in the deserted places forever. There are still things we have to do, still reasons to boot it all up and reconnect to the coming and going and to the world that takes and takes and takes.

But the disconnecting matters. We can do it—we must do it—so that we can stay connected to the God who meets us in that wilderness. The God who sees all, knows all, stays connected to all without burning out or losing focus.

Many are coming and going. Time is hard to come by.

But the Sabbath is here. Unplug and be with God.