It feels like we’ve been going at breakneck speed since the beginning of the year. It has been fast paced and quite exhilarating. This month alone we’ve had so much going on in the life of the church. With a church outing to Capernaum, Mother’s Day, CDC graduation, District Conference, as well as two recitals of young people who Alexis works with, this month has been a blur. This Sunday begins our Horizon Texas Conference in Wichita Falls, and by next Saturday we will be participating in the Gay Pride parade. Activity after activity has me feeling like we’ve been going non-stop.
As we approach the Summer, there is a kind of slow-down that takes place. The pace is less frenetic, the days are longer and warmer, the time seems less busy.
There is a real rhythm and cycle to our lives and seasons. Thank goodness for that, otherwise we couldn’t stand the pace. There’s always going to be those times with extreme activity and expending lots of energy. But there has to also be a time of rest, recovery, and rejuvenation.
God certainly knows the busy-ness we encounter. God also was busy in the beginning, but on the seventh day God rested from all his labors. Rest made it into the Top Ten, I’m referring to the 10 commandments. The fourth commandment says “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” We think of that as referring to worshipping God, but it is so much more than that. Sabbath is a set aside time for rest. Its not time to clean the house, mow the yard, or other things we busy our lives with. It is a day to rest.
I’m not sure we’re all that good at resting. So many of us seem to have it baked into us that to do nothing constitutes laziness or wasting of time. When we finally get still, we continue to scroll through our phones or other devices checking all the different social media sites. We fidget and get nervous when we are just still, and yet that is exactly what God calls us to be. “Be still, and know that I am God.”(Psalm 46:10)
In Luke 10:40-42 we read…”But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’
‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Mary chose to rest in the presence of Jesus, while Martha couldn’t sit still. Many of us are just the same. We can’t have time doing nothing, we have to be occupied doing something.
I know myself pretty well, and I recognize when its time for me to pull away and rest. My nature is to be engaged with people, but it draws energy out of me. Some are energized by interaction with others. After church on Sunday, I have to have a time apart and to myself. That time is precious to me because I know how well it prepares me for the times when I am with others.
In the letter to the Hebrews, in chapter 4:9-10, the author writes…”here remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his”. God knows how we were created, and God knows what we need, this is why rest is mandated for us. As one of my clergy colleagues reminded me, we are called human beings, not human doings. We MUST have time to just be. This is also the time when we are most susceptible to hearing God’s voice. Not in our doing, but in our being.
My prayer for all of us as we prepare to enter a slower cycle of time is to find our rest. I hope for the long days to bring times of recuperation, times of strengthening, times of recharging. In order to give, we must receive. And God wants us to receive the rest we need so that we are able to do the works God presents us with.
Your companion on the Way,
Pastor Tom