rest

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the disciples return from the towns and villages where they had been sent in pairs to share the good news, cast out demons, and anoint the sick. After sharing with Jesus all they had done and taught, he invites them to "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

From the very beginning of Genesis, we see God's example of sabbath rest after six days of creation. God's example is then enshrined in the Ten Commandments with the command to "Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy." Later, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, this command to rest is expanded to include not just people, but also animals, and the land itself. While sabbath is an important way to connect to God in worship, it's also a physical need. Our bodies can only do so much. If people or animals are worked to the point of exhaustion for too long, they can suffer serious injury, or die. If the land is planted with the same crop year after year, with no replacement of nutrients or time to lie fallow, it will stop producing. 

Rest is an important part of the rhythm of life, and yet so often we are resistant to it. Sometimes we are resistant because rest feels impossible. We have too many responsibilities, too many commitments. Rest would be great, but who has time?! If I rest, we might think, everything will fall apart. Or perhaps we are resistant because rest feels out of reach; a luxury we cannot afford. This might be due to things outside our control, like work schedules, or family obligations, or bills that won't stop coming - larger systems where it is hard to effect change.

And yet, for all the challenges and all the resistance, we know that rest is of critical importance to our life and health. Eventually, a lack of rest will catch up to us, sometimes with disastrous results. 

The rest that we are invited into by Jesus is more than just a few hours of self-care or a vacation (though both are valuable!). Instead, it is an invitation to fundamentally shift how we view our relationship to work, activity, and abundant life. It is an invitation to separate our sense of worth from our ability to achieve and produce and be "successful", however we might define it. It is an invitation to stop, and just be; an invitation to trust God's provision and admit that the world keeps going even without our intervention. 

I will be the first to admit that this is so hard, and I don't have any answers about how to make it easier. As we'll hear on Sunday, even the disciples' time away for rest is cut short when the crowds again find them, bringing the sick to Jesus to receive healing. Sometimes the demands on us feel similarly relentless. And yet, at its heart, rest is grace. It is restoration and abundant life. It is a gift from God.

Bonus resources: 

• This isn't really connected to church, specifically, but I was intrigued by this piece from author Anne Helen Petersen exploring the effects of a four day work week (happier, healthier, and equally - or even more productive workers!).
• This beautiful piece called "Discovering sabbath in my mother's hospice room", from Christian Century.