Rest

November 14, 2026

On Thursday, a Microsoft outage was caused by a core server component failing automated health checks, which triggered all other Microsoft services to stop functioning, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot.

This was an issue for me because our conference email system uses the Microsoft platform, and I still can’t access my work email (even as I write this). The conference office was aware of this, and there was nothing we could do but wait. This outage affected thousands of companies worldwide that use Microsoft as their work platform.

I was talking about this to one of the conference staff, and he joked, “I wish the outage wouldn’t be fixed for a week!” In fact, we weren’t the only ones who felt this way. Social media was flooded with memes about the outage, and in them you can see office workers wishing the system wouldn’t be fixed. In a world where we are all swamped with work, the outage forced many of us to take a break.

For us, as followers of God, we have a wonderful institution where we can actually take a break from work without our infrastructure crashing: the Sabbath. Jesus clearly stated, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27. After creating the world in six days, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creation that he had done.” Genesis 2:2,3. Sabbath was given to us by God as a gift, not only to rest from work, but to spend quality time and exclusive time with our Creator. I pray that we take advantage of this blessing and be in His presence.