I amaze myself sometimes, at just how irrational I can be.
Life can feel so extremely busy these days, with a family, a congregation, a home, a yard, vehicles, pets and so forth. I find myself regularly seeking out moments of rest; little chances in the day or in the week to catch my breath and to feel some level of emotional and spiritual refreshment. More times than not, I seek this rest in things like movies, news websites and skateboarding. The reason I seek rest in these things is because I have this unspoken belief that rest will come through more “me time;” through forgetting about my responsibilities and tasks and burdens for a few moments and focusing on the things that I enjoy and that I can get lost in; things like movies, news articles, skateboarding, etc. The funny thing is though, very often I come out of those “restful” activities, more fatigued than before, or at least no more rested.
Now at the same time, I continually come to passages in scripture that speak about rest, and they always point in the same direction, and it is not more “me time.”
Psalm 23.2 - He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”
Matthew 11:28 – “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Hebrews 4:10 – “For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”
In these passages and so many more, God is the source of the rest. He is the one producing it and the one inviting us to receive it.
The Irrationality Part
Here is the irrationality of it all. I know that the things I choose to find rest in won’t every give me the kind of rest I am seeking from them. I know it deep it down. I also know that God can and will give me the kind of rest that I need. And yet, still I continue to choose the one at the expense of the other.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with enjoying enjoyable and relaxing activities. God gave us all of them, and I am sure thankful that He did! But the fact of the matter is that true rest will never come from those things. It will come from Him. It will come from Him as we come to Him and, and whether for the first time or the five hundredth time, we place our trust in Him. It will come as we, by faith, through prayer, in worship and with Scripture, throw all of our worries, anxieties, doubts, sins, pressures and ambitions before Him. That is where rest lives! In the arms of an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father.
And it makes sense doesn’t it, that rest would be found in Him alone? In dictionary terms to rest is to cease all movement; to make no effort; to be still. It is to be relieved of all of the weight that we are carrying. Well, God is the only one who can fully support us, the only whose shoulders are able to bear the weight that we carry and so to relieve us of everything we’ve been carrying. He is the only one strong enough to carry us, so that we can cease moving; so that we can feel light, as if we are being carried on wings of eagles. No relationship can do that. No sport can do that. No sit back and relax type of entertainment can do that.
The Plan
To be honest, I plan to continue watching films, reading the news and riding a skateboard, as time allows. But by God’s grace, I will stop expecting those things to be the answer to my stress and fatigue, and will stop doing those things at the expense of time spent with Jesus. At the risk of sounding cliche, I plan to seek and find my rest this week not in more “me time,” but in more “He time.”
