Real Rest
by Tom Harrigan
Where do you feel most “at rest” ... that place where your heart rate slows, you breathe deeply, and every anxious thought just melts away? Perhaps it's curled up with a good book and coffee, or anytime you hold your grandchild, or sitting by the fireplace, or spending time with trusted friends. For me it’s anywhere in the mountains with the smell of pine trees, or at the ocean with the sound of crashing waves. One deep breath in either of those environments and something in me changes.
I wish I was there right now!
As I write this, I’m in the middle of huge life transitions. It was announced two weekends ago that we are leaving a ministry we’ve loved and called home for 12 years. This past weekend I returned to a church I’ve preached at before; this time I was introduced as a new member of their staff. My wife and I have scrambled for the last two weeks to get our house ready to sell in an uncertain economy with rising interest rates. We have spent every spare moment we’re not cleaning and organizing, with dear friends starting to say goodbye. All this is on top of the regular routines and responsibilities of life.
Perhaps you’re in a busy season like that as well. Maybe your kids are starting a new school year soon and summer seems to be flying by. Maybe your job roles are shifting with more responsibilities coming. Perhaps a cherished relationship is suffering from lack of attention. It could also be that you’ve actually got one too many plates spinning to keep up with them.
A pastor once asked Theologian Dallas Willard, “what do I need to DO to become the me I want to be?” Willard paused before speaking, a frequent practice apparently, and said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” The pastor responded, “Ok, what else?” Willard replied, “there’s nothing else! Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer)
Corrie Ten Boom once said, “if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” And I think we’d all agree that as hard as we might try to change it, the spinning plates of responsibilities in our lives don’t seem to be slowing or decreasing. There’s even a diagnosis for what many of us are experiencing. World renowned cardiologist, Meyer Freidman, calls it “hurry sickness” and defined it as “a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish more and more events in less and less time.”
And guess what? He came up with that diagnosis in the 1950s!
Now, it’s 70 years later, and our souls feel crushed by our pace of life. We are more irritable, sensitive, and restless than ever before. We know we can’t maintain this pace, but we don’t know how to stop.
But I don’t think our problem is a lack of awareness of our unsustainable pace. We all regularly feel the effects of hurrying from one thing to another as we fall into bed each night only to wake up and do it all over again. No, the real problem we have is where we look to find real rest. “That week of vacation will solve all my problems,” we think to ourselves. So, we dream and plan for the perfect getaway to unwind. But it takes us several days to settle in and just when we’ve started to rest, it’s time to start packing to come home. “Well, I just need to shut my brain off for a while.” So, we move from one streaming television series to the next, trying to get lost from our own hurried lives in someone else’s story.
Our phones have become the primary place we look for temporary “escapes.” A study found the average iPhone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times a day, for two and a half hours a day, over seventy-six daily “sessions” of viewing. (Business Insider, July 13, 2016)
Matthew 11:28-29 is the most quoted verses on “rest” I that know of. Jesus invites his followers to “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
As well-known as this verse is, it seems we are further from true “soul rest” than we’ve ever been. And I believe this is because we’ve confused the intentional moments of rest Jesus is inviting to, with “mindless distractions” we turn to day to day.
There are times when Jesus seems to talk in riddles and parables where no one fully understood what he’s getting at. This is not one of those times. His invitation is as straightforward as it gets, “You want real rest? Soul rest? Then come to me ...” That’s it!
We won’t find real rest from a few minutes of games on our phones, or a week of vacation, or binging the latest streaming show! Jesus is the only source of real rest! Even my perfect mountain or beach settings don’t bring rest UNLESS I intentionally spend time with Jesus while I’m there.
Yet too often I’ve tried to find “imitation rest” from created things rather than accept the invitation from The Creator to find lasting soul rest in him!
St. Augustine, in his book Confessions, (written between 397-400 AD), declares to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”
I’m not sure life will slow down for us anytime soon. But I’m certain where we can find rest amid our hectic schedules. The question is, how long will we go everywhere BUT to Jesus to find it? What practices can you begin today, regardless of your schedule, to “come to Jesus” and find what you’ve been looking for all along ... rest for your soul?
