For once, I didn't turn the volume down.

Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars, a favourite.

"If I lay here. If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world?"

To close your eyes and forget the world.

To let it keep spinning without you.

How often do you wish you could lie down and forget the world?

As I backed the car out the drive and indicated down the street, I thought what that would mean.

One word. Escape.

I pulled into the street, joining a long line of commuters dancing on their brake pedal.

Escape is no easy thing.

As we collect years, so too do we collect responsibilities and the requisite expectations.

The expectation is to excel, to do it on time, to make contact, to complete the task, to deal with it, to deliver.

The fuel light is on.

I guess I'm expected to fill the tank too.

Snow Patrol's heartfelt tune rises to a crescendo, emptying questions.

"Forget what we're told. Before we get too old. Show me a garden that's bursting into life."

If you're like this correspondent, every so often you get restless. The things that fill your diary lose their meaning and you wonder why they're even there.

Christmas time - the end of another year, is a particular harbinger of this melancholy mood.

Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody is fabled to have penned the song with a belly full of white wine in the garden of producer Garret Lee's cottage in Kent.

Hope that didn't spoil it for you.

He called it his purest love song.

"Show me a garden that's bursting into life."

Times like these, we need rejuvenating and inspiration. We need to be recharged.

How often, when someone asks how you are, do you answer "I'm surviving," or "I'm keeping my head above water" or worse still, you chirp "good," but the smile doesn't reach your eyes?

How often do you roll out of bed just as tired as when you tucked yourself in?

Jesus got tired too. He got fed up with the world.

Unlike many of us though, he knew when to withdraw.

He retreated from the crowds milling around him. He retreated from his disciples. He spent time alone - time resting and praying.

Jesus got tired, and he did something about it. Speaking of God's promises, he said, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light " (Matthew 11:28-30).

Driving into a parking spot I pull the handbrake on and turn off the engine, closing my eyes to listen to the end of the song.

"... and just forget the world," the notes fade.

And then silence, white and beautiful.

Time to rest.