Our hearts and minds cry out for rest in the busyness of life. Like my husband recently opined, “I feel like I have not had a break since before Christmas.” It is that time of year when the hustle and bustle of the fall holidays has ended, the weather turns cold, the out of doors looks stark, and we grope for purpose in the New Year. We make plans to do and to accomplish, but not many of us plan to rest.
Resting is necessary for life. Our bodies need rest for good health. We are given 24 hours in a day and at least 7-8 of them should be sleep. But what about our minds and emotions? Science is telling us that Americans are overworked and overstimulated. We know this personally already - just look at your screen time. Our brains need downtime just as our bodies need sleep. But we have been told all of this for a long, long time and we have resisted rest because we have not believed we needed it.
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| Resting by Victor Gabriel Gilbert |
A verse I love and often meditate on is Jeremiah 6:16,”Thus says the Lord:”Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” But they said, ‘we will not walk in it.” There is so much in that verse, isn’t there? We wring our hands wondering how we are to live and yet we have been given a promise of “a good way” if we will only “look and ask.”
God made man and woman to walk in a garden, to work and enjoy it, to rest, and commune with his Creator God. We fell and now we have pain and sinful minds to fight through. Our troubled lives drive us to look for peace and rest. But God did not leave us helpless, He gave us truths and promises that will never fail. We have been given principles that we can trust and live by.
In the beginning, God establishes a Sabbath - a day of rest. For most Christians, Sunday is the day of rest. We all long to make that day more sacred, more restful, and we can if we become more intentional. But we can also use this principle of sabbath rest for more than just Sundays. I was struck by a Sabbath practice that Charles Spurgeon employed weekly. He set aside every Wednesday as a Sabbath rest. He did not do any other work on Wednesdays. He called it his mid-week Sabbath and he did nothing but spend time with his family, walk in the garden, read and study. Where could we use more Sabbath rest?
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| Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field by John Singer Sergent |
Jesus often went away by himself to pray and spend time in solitary places away from crowds and those he ministered to on a regular basis. We are also admonished to “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matt. 6:6 When we make the time to come away and pray and read and meditate we are following Christ’s example of communing with God the Father. Christ tells us to come to Him when we are weary and heavy laden and we will find rest for our souls. This “coming away” takes some believing and trusting and intentionality. But God’s promises are all yes and amen!
In the 23rd Psalm we have a beautiful picture of rest as well. As we rest and trust in the Good Shepherd, we find that we lack nothing. Nothing. Tasks and people can wait as we follow where God is leading us, beside still waters, refreshing our souls. Our work and our relationships will be more productive and blessed as we follow God’s call to rest in Him.
Doctors and scientists alike are telling us that we need days where we stop and do nothing, that meditation is good for us, and that resting makes us more creative and productive in the long run. But God showed us that resting is where our strength lies long ago. And those who follow Christ have access to something even more profound. We are not called to just rest, but to rest in Someone.
Christ tells us, “Come to me… and I will give you rest.” Because Christ has accomplished all that we need for acceptance by God on the cross, we can rest securely in the love of Jesus. We strive because we do not believe that the cross was enough. When we come to Jesus and cast all that wearies and burdens us onto Him, we find the rest our souls long for and crave. This does not happen over night! We change by degrees. This changing, this sanctifying, will go on our entire lives; we will continue to grow in learning to trust Christ and rest in Him and His work on our behalf.
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| Rest in the Peace of His Hands by Kathe Kollwitz |
One way we can combat the unbelief that resting in Christ is not enough to satisfy us, is to look at the promises of God. What has He promised that He will do? By reading, thinking on and praying through these promises in Scripture, we find that our faith is built and our unbelief diminishes. As we learn to trust Christ and His Word, our faith is built and we find that we too are walking in the cool of the day without any fears or inhibitions and we are in sweet restful fellowship with our Lord and Savior. He loves those He bled and died for and He cannot forget His own. He is calling us to rest, let us not refuse it.
“For thus says the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling.” Isaiah 30:15
~ Your Fellow Sojourner
