Digging For Rest

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27

MY SISTER’S FIRSTBORN daughter is strong, independent, and hilarious. She’s always bent on doing things her way. Even before she was able to put together complete sentences, she shooed away any help and declared, “Me do it.” She was going to take care of business, and help was not necessary.

I can shoo with the best of toddlers too. I often think I run the world—that it all rests on my shoulders. And if I don’t do all the things, who will?

When it comes to soul care, keeping the Sabbath is one of the most difficult practices for me. And yet it is one of the most beneficial. Once I realized keeping a day of rest was not a heavy burden but rather a gift to lighten my load, I was all in.

We don’t have to look much further than the very first week of Creation to get a glimpse of this gift from God. For six days straight, God created stars, skies, waters, deserts, mountains, insects, animals, and human beings. Then He created rest.

He was setting up an order, a way of being, a pattern for His crown of creation to follow: Work hard. Rest well. Trust God. Repeat. We see God make the Sabbath one of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, and Jesus expounds on it beautifully in the New Testament. He says the Sabbath is a gift of rest, not a yoke of rules about how to rest.

John Piper puts it this way: “Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Sabbath but to dig it out from under the mountain of legalistic sediment, and give it to us again as a blessing rather than a burden.”^a In learning to wipe off the legalism and graciously put on the gift of rest, I continually run into choices in which I can either trust God or trust myself. There have been Sundays, my typical Sabbath day, when I suddenly remember a deadline or a task that needs to be done first thing Monday. And it’s a face-off in my soul: Do I trust that my Father will take care of me as I rest in Him, or do I turn on the heat and go accomplish that task? Do I quit my worry, or do I quicken my steps? Do I Sabbath, or do I scramble?

Friend, without fail, God shows up every single time I rest in Him. God resources us in our rest.

Have you ever noticed how a rested woman looks amazing? I’m not just talking about getting a full night’s sleep. I’m talking about a woman who rests from comparison, from productivity, from “busy” as a status symbol. She knows who she is, and more importantly she knows who God is. And she rests in that.

GRACE REFLECTION: Plan a day to rest this week. Allow this quote from Pastor Sammy Adebiyi to rest in your soul: “God can do more in one minute than we can achieve in a lifetime.”