Rest.
Rest is hard for me. I think it's hard for a lot of us. And it's even harder for us to recognize that not resting can be a sin. At least for me it was.
For the past month or so, Patrick and I have both been incredibly busy. Between work and ministry and family and friends, we just have not stopped going. But to be honest, I like it that way. Filling every second of my times makes me feel productive, wanted, selfless, admired, useful, important, accomplished, independent, complete, etc...
And yet, none of these things bring glory to Christ... They are all centered around bringing glory to me.
That realization rocked me. Who am I to think I have something to offer? Who am I to think I can do it all on my own? How dare I fill every second of my time in order to empower myself and my image when Christ is the one who granted me that time? How dare I not use it to bask in HIS glory?
Yet, His grace is greater.
•••
"God, as we see in creation, isn’t a deity wringing his sweaty hands in panic, trying to milk dry every last drop of what’s there. No. He speaks and it comes to be, out of nothing, and he does it in six days, resting on the seventh just because he can. He wants us to know, right from the start and in the rhythms of our lives, that he doesn’t need anything. He is the one who works, in perfect precision, neither too little nor too much, and we exist to bask in his glory, not barter for its increase. We exist to magnify his radiance, not supplement his worth.
And because this is the case, in a world where everyone’s deity says to do, do, do, the God of Israel says to stop. The air we breathe of this fallen world is anxiety: Keep busy and stay nervous. And it’s into this mess, striking through the smog like flashes of lightening, the fundamental message of God’s salvation resounds: Trust me and rest.
Then Stop
The principle of Sabbath is a glorious picture of God’s self-sufficiency and unwavering ability to provide. As God’s people, our rest becomes “a decisive, concrete, visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest” (Location 278). Perhaps as much now as in that early biblical context, one of the most head-turning, soul-stirring moves we make as a witness to God’s holiness is when we stop.
At night when we go to bed, on a whole day when we pause our projects, in a season of vacation or Sabbatical, our stopping work is our saying Enough! to the merry-go-round. We don’t have to ride this thing. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–10). Rest, then, becomes our regular dramatization of the heart of the gospel: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith will be counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5).
We can put down our tools. We can close our computers. We can forbid those thoughts about that next meeting or those emails waiting for a reply or how the numbers aren’t as high as we’d like. We can stop and trust him who justifies the ungodly. We can trust that when Jesus died in our place on the cross, he died to destroy all the anxieties of our lack, to still our ceaseless striving, to hush the winds of our self-justifying labor, to irrevocably connect us to the abundance of his grace we possess by his work, not ours.
We can trust the Lord of Rest who came to give us rest, and say, because of who he is: Stop making bricks — you can stop."
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