Do you ever read the early verses of Genesis and sigh with longing? I do. The beautiful garden. Perfect interaction with nature. An intimate relationship with God. True, perpetual rest.
Interestingly enough, though, the true rest was not an absence of work.
We honestly don’t know how Adam and Eve spent their days in the garden. All we know is that they didn’t just flit around mindlessly without purposeful activity. They were the garden’s keepers. Because all we know is the curse, we have no idea what it looks like to keep a garden in an environment of perfection. We know the effort it takes to coax food out of the ground through toil – to work hard to ensure good soil, keep back the weeds that also love the good soil, and maintain a proper balance of irrigation. Without a day-to-day description of how Adam and Even lived before the Fall, we can only make guesses as to what beautiful, rewarding, curse-free work looks like.
But, what does that have to do with rest?
Some time ago, my family made a change in our schedule. We realized that we were going non-stop seven days a week for weeks on end because the normal down time of our culture simply did not work for us. Sundays are work days for a pastor’s family. Period. Even for the kids. They might not have as many responsibilities as Dad or even Mom, but they still have to be “on” all day on Sunday. It’s work. And, most of our Saturdays were becoming consumed with this obligation or that. Even if it was enjoyable obligations, it still was not optional and was not rest.
So, we shifted school and my work so that the whole family could share Doug’s day off.
Obviously, as a pastor, he doesn’t always get that day off. Sometimes needs that fall on a Friday are just not optional. But, we have still been able to become much more proactive about distinguishing between those things that are and are not optional and preserving Friday as a day of rest.
But, the rest part has not been automatic. Thanks to the curse of sin, rest – real rest – is not something that comes naturally. Our natural inclination seems to be to replace rest with escapism. Run from work. Run from obligation. But escapism is never truly rest.
So what is rest? Real, biblical rest?
Well, we can look at what little we know of the garden. We can look in the laws God outlined for the Israelites after rescuing them from Egypt. And we can look at the discussion of Sabbath rest in Hebrews. Gallons of ink, millions of words, and hours upon hours of thought and study have gone into this question. There is no way I can simply or definitively solve the problem in one simple blog post.
But, I can share one thing that I know for sure: Rest is not about the absence of work. On the contrary, rest is enjoying the things God is doing around us. His work.
I can’t find the exact Mark Buchanan quote, but in his book The Rest of God, he talks about orchestrating every day of our week around the Sabbath. The three days before look toward it, working in preparation for it. The three days after look back upon it, implementing its message into the routine of life. (Great book – I highly recommend it!)
That is Sabbath rest. Taking a day to enjoy the work of God so greatly that it permeates every corner of our curse-soaked work week, allowing us to see God’s hand even as we fight through what so often feels like mire.
I hunger to learn more about true rest each week because I know it drives me a little close to the way I was created to live – in the beautiful rest of perfect work alongside my Savior and my God.
Not Quite Ordinary 