So it’s the weekend. What a relief.  But here’s how the weekend is with me: it’s full of things that I have to do because I haven’t gotten them done when I should.

The fact is I’m a little disorganised.  I have a diary but not an up-to-date diary. I have good intentions but not good practices.  So my weekend, it turns out, is less a relief than a dribbling-on of the working week.

It’s my own fault, I know, but why worry?  There’s no glamour in good admin and anyway, real heroes just get on with the job, whenever it needs doing.

The great Antarctic hero, Ernest Shackleton, said that the qualities required of a polar explorer were optimism, patience, idealism and courage.   But what he didn’t mention was one of his own greatest strengths – organisation. 

Before he could explore anything there were years of fundraising, equipping, selecting a crew, plotting routes and training.  Before he could save his crew by crossing 900 South Atlantic miles in a lifeboat and climbing an uncharted mountain range he had to get the boat strengthened, the sides raised, divide the supplies, make a plan. Before the heroics, he got organised.

Now, weirdly, the heroic, foundational story of the bible, the story of creation, is also about being organised. And it’s also about the weekend.

In the story, God goes to work, with a task for every day: first, light; then sky; then earth and plants; sun, moon and stars followed by fishes and birds and finally animals and people.  Six days work, neatly divided up. Very organised.  Very good.

And then this: ‘By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested.’

And that’s the thing. I reckon that being organised doesn’t just enable us to be more efficient and productive, to do more work. No. It lets us stop, like God, and see that what we have done is good.  It liberates us from worry. It enables us to rest.

And rest is necessary. I believe God made rest for us.  It’s fundamental to our humanity.  Call it a sabbath if you like. Call it play. Or just call it the weekend.

So maybe it’s time for me to get organised. To get my act together. Not so I can do more. So I can take a break.

The image above is of Ernest Shackleton and his crew dragging a lifeboat across the Antarctic ice on December 25th 1915, during their ultimately unsuccessful march towards Paulet Island following the abandonment of the Endurance in October. This and the subsequent stages of the expedition – the camp on Elephant Island, the sea-voyage to South Georgia and the crossing of the mountains to the whaling station at Stromness – comprise one of the great stories of exploration and survival.

There’s no recording of this.