Work stress follows me home every night. I am physically at dinner with my family and mentally still in the office. How do I switch it off?

“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”

This psalm is attributed to Solomon, who ran enormous building projects and understood ambition from the inside. It pictures someone rising early, staying late, and eating anxious bread, and the verdict is that the striving is empty. Sleep is described as a gift to those God loves. Rest is not earned at the end of productivity. It is handed to you as a sign that the world does not rest on your shoulders.

“And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Martha's complaint is entirely reasonable. She is doing real work that genuinely needs doing while her sister sits. Jesus does not say the work does not matter. He names what has happened to her: she has become careful and troubled about many things, and the anxiety has expanded past the task into her whole self. That is the difference between working hard and being carried home by the work.