Does Work-from-Home Mean Work-Without-Rest?

How can I find rest when work-at-home mode tends to imply that work never really stops?

When I was on paternity leave after my second child was born, I developed a strange habit of wandering into my home office and sitting in my desk chair. Not because I had work to do or a deadline loomed. I went there purely by reflex. I’d sit at my desk while holding my newborn and think, Why am I here?

The grooves of my life had trained me to drift into work without purposely choosing to do so. Simply being at home wasn’t enough to stop me from sliding back into “work mode.”

In the work-from-home world—and for many pastors, stay-at-home parents, or caretakers—this experience isn’t unusual. Even if our devices are silent, our minds keep humming. Our closed laptops sit on the table and whisper, “Just one quick thing . . .”

So how do you rest when work never really stops?

Why Work Is Sticky

One reason rest feels so elusive today is that work has become sticky. Work clings. It seeps into the cracks between the activities we actually should be doing.

Working from home makes this painfully obvious. With no commute to create a natural boundary, you can walk past your desk on a Saturday and suddenly find yourself checking an email “just to make sure.” Or you check the weather forecast—and 45 minutes later you emerge from a completely unrelated rabbit hole, wondering what happened. (If the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, how long do modern humans wander the internet?)

There’s a parenting version of this too. Toddlers don’t respect nine-to-five. You sit down to rest, and your baby cries or your 3-year-old announces it’s time for an unscheduled urban-planning project involving blocks, snacks, and the family dog. Stay-at-home parents often carry heavier and more relentless work than the rest of us—and it follows them everywhere, including to the shower.

Then there’s the caretaker or ministry version. As a church elder, I’ve felt this deeply. You can meet for hours about a painful situation, but when you get home, the problem hasn’t magically resolved. If someone’s spouse is having an affair, the affair doesn’t end with the workday, nor does it end for the weekend. You can stop working, but the work doesn’t end. Caregivers know that needs don’t clock out. The work is bigger than you, and it doesn’t stop.

The real issue for many of us is that our work never stops, even if we do.

Deliberate Rest as a Countercultural Groove

This is exactly where intentional rest speaks the loudest. God calls us to rest as a reminder that we’re no longer slaves. And that means we rest not when our work is done—it might never be—but because we know that work doesn’t own us. We relinquish the idea that only our effort will get the work done.

There is, as Tim Keller describes, a “work beneath the work,” a need to define ourselves and make an identity, and rest involves a faithful releasing and letting God do that work.

Resting isn’t just a command—it’s an act of trust. Just as Israel had to stop gathering manna on the seventh day, we stop our gathering too. Not because everything is finished but because God keeps working even when we don’t. Rest from work is a declaration that God, not us, is ultimately responsible for the work getting done. Whatever work we do is God working through us.

We rest not when our work is done—it might never be—but because we know that work doesn’t own us.

This rest is grounded in what God is doing now and what he’s promised to do fully. One day, Jesus will set everything right—every injustice corrected, every wound healed, every unfinished work brought to completion. That future certainty frees us to rest in the present. We don’t have to finish everything now, because Christ will finish everything then.

Practical Ways to Create Patterns of Rest

Rest doesn’t happen by accident. We can choose patterns to enable it.

1. Create a buffer between work and rest.

Make your workspace less of a magnet by marking the transition between “working” and “being home.” If your office is a place you drift into unconsciously, rearrange it. Close the laptop. Shut the door. Put a plant in the chair. Do something to break the automatic habit.

Teachers erase the board at the end of the day; parents put toys in baskets before bedtime. Your work needs a basket too. When you finish work, take a short walk around the block. Change clothes at the end of the day—even if it’s Sweatpants #1 swapped for Sweatpants #2. Designate one chair in the house as “no-work territory.” Small cues help your brain shift lanes.

2. Be intentional with your home time.

Make plans for a Friday night evening out or a Saturday morning run. Choose a book to read, a recipe to try, or a project to complete. When we’re aimless or bored, it’s easy to think, I might as well check my work email. When we have a purpose, we’re much more likely to stay on track.

3. Embrace role boundaries.

For pastors, parents, and caregivers, your work is heavier and more emotionally charged. You may never be “fully off.” But even you can have rhythms: a nightly prayer of release, a morning prayer of rereceiving, a day each week where you intentionally do no active ministry response. You’re not neglecting people—you’re trusting God with them.

Rest Because God Works

The truth is, the problems you paused tonight may greet you again in the morning. But taking a break is about remembering that the world isn’t upheld by your effort.

Maybe the most surprising thing about rest is this: The work doesn’t fall apart when you take your hands off it. Sometimes the unanswered email solves itself. Sometimes the crisis de-escalates without your intervention. Sometimes the task that seemed urgent on Saturday isn’t even relevant by Monday.

You’re not neglecting people—you’re trusting God with them.

The surprising way problems untangle while we rest isn’t a sign that we were slacking. It’s a sign of grace, a quiet reminder that God is at work even when we’re not.

Work will always be sticky, but God’s faithfulness is stickier still. When we stop—truly stop—we discover that the whole time we were trying to carry everything, someone else already was. And the stickiest part of all is the hope of where the story is heading.

Because one day Jesus will make all things new, we can stop trying to make all things right today. And pausing regularly in our work is a rehearsal for that coming rest.