We live busy lives. Jobs, church, family, friends, calendars, and commitments can consume the bulk of your available 168 hours each week if you let them. Some weeks, it feels like I am in a constant state of motion. I try to slow down on the weekend. Especially on Sunday. It is reserved for a day of rest. A good long nap is refreshing to the body and soul.
But on Sunday evenings, a tension starts to creep in. Barely recovered from the week prior, my brain starts looking to the week ahead. And as I sit attempting to relax, a feeling of guilt starts setting in that I'm resting and not working. I could be writing for my Substack, studying for my next sermon, checking emails, or a hundred other things on my "to-do" list. I do battle with this feeling most Sunday evenings, and it tends to creep in on other rare days when I have a little downtime.
We seem to have become a society that is perpetually busy. This perpetual busyness lays waste to our bodies physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is easy to rationalize away our busyness as "just a season" when, in reality, long periods of our lives are lived at a relentless pace. We live tethered to technologies that vie for our attention against the backdrop of everything else going on around us. The societal landscape around us is characterized by constant connectivity to information and data. Most days, we are on information overload, and it taxes our emotions and our psyche. If margin exists at all in our schedules, it is razor-thin. Most people I meet are tired.
There always seems to be more to do than can be done in a day. Even when we try to rest, we don't enjoy it because it just feels like wasted time, but that's not how Jesus thought about rest. Rest was a regular rhythm in his life. The divine Architect of our being put on human flesh himself and felt its limited capacities. And then purposefully and intentionally lived within its constraints.
Can you imagine being Jesus and seeing the world through his eyes? He could look into the heart of a man and see all the pain, the need, the desperation. He bore witness as he walked this earth to all the brokenness of humanity. Everywhere he went, he was needed by someone. There was an insurmountable amount of work to be done in the lives of men. He could have worked around the clock every day of the week, the need was so great. Even so, rest was a high priority for Jesus. Why do we struggle to make it a priority ourselves? Perhaps we need to review again how Jesus took care of his physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Jesus Taught Dependence, Not Control
Sometimes we struggle with finding rest because we tend to feel responsible for everything and everyone around us. We fall into the trap of believing we have to do everything. Who is going to do what I do if I am not here? What often manifests itself as a control issue is quite possibly just a trust issue. Again, there were so many lost, searching, hurting, and confused people around Jesus daily that he could have worked twenty-four hours a day throughout his earthly ministry and not accomplished all the work that needed to be done. Thankfully, the one major work he came to do would be the cure for the human condition, and he put all of his effort into accomplishing that one task to the glory of God the Father. He didn’t worry about the work left undone, knowing that God was in control. Many people find it hard to rest because they feel responsible for everything. To truly rest, you must trust that it’s okay to step back, and that God will take care of what you can’t. It was Jesus who said,
"So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today." - Matthew 6:34
Jesus Prioritized Rest and Solitude
In Mark 6, we read this…
30 The apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught. 31 Then Jesus said, “Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.” He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. 32 So they left by boat for a quiet place, where they could be alone. - Mark 6:30-32
The disciples had just gone from village to village in Israel preaching the gospel. They were calling people to repentance, and along the way, they were healing people and casting out demons, and anointing people with oil. And as they were giving Jesus a ministry report, people were continuing to show up. We are told here in Mark 6 that they didn't even have time to eat. So, Jesus calls a time-out. He pulls his disciples away from the crowds for some solitude. They get in a boat and head off to a quiet place. But by the time they got there, the crowds were already waiting for them. So, Jesus decides, because it is late, that these people need to be fed. So, he feeds five thousand people miraculously, and then Mark tells us…
Mark 6:45-46
45 Immediately after this, Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and head across the lake to Bethsaida, while he sent the people home. 46 After telling everyone good-bye, he went up into the hills by himself to pray.
Peter, Andrew, and Phillip were from Bethsaida. He basically told the disciples to head home. “Hey guys, go home, see your family, rest. I’m going to tell these people to do the same.” And then Jesus went up into the hills to pray and have some alone time to communicate with his Father. Solitude, rest, and spiritual renewal were a high priority for Jesus.
Jesus Showed us the Balance Between Work and Rest
You might think I am off base with this, but I hold followers of Jesus to a pretty high standard when it comes to work, secular or otherwise. God does nothing mediocre. The work of his hands is always nothing short of excellence. As should ours be if we are to be imitators of God. However, working hard and working well does not mean workaholic. I love the fact that Jesus modeled hard work, but he also balanced it with rest. In Mark 1:21-32, Jesus heads to the Synagogue on the Sabbath to teach. Having taught for a time and performed a miracle, he heads to Simon Peter's house, where he heals Peter's mother-in-law. After sunset, Mark tells us that Jesus continued to heal, "many people who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons." Jesus put in a long, hard day's work. Teaching in the synagogue through the morning, spending time at the home of two disciples, healing Simon's mother in the afternoon, and then healing people with physical and spiritual sickness until long after dark. Then Jesus rested. He got a good night's sleep and then got up early and spent time alone with his Father.
Note that he spent so much time isolated the next morning, away from the crowds, that Simon and the others went searching for him. They were concerned about the length of his absence from the group. How do we know? By the words from verse thirty-seven, "Everyone is looking for you." Why were they looking for Jesus? Because there was more work to be done! More healing needed. More teaching. As if Jesus wasn't aware. He says as much in the next verse, "We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came." Jesus knew there was much work to be done, but he wasn't trying to cram all of it into one day while going a hundred miles an hour. He worked hard, built rest and spiritual renewal into his schedule, and lived a perfect balance between work and rest.
Conclusion
Chuck Swindoll, in his book Man to Man, says, "to be an imitator of God, requires that we come to terms with the value of quietness, slowing down, coming apart from the noise and speed of today’s pace, and broadening our lives with a view of the eternal reach of time." We need a paradigm shift in how we view the direction of our outputs in relation to our Sabbath rhythms. All of us clearly see in the creation account that God rested on the seventh day. His work of creation being accomplished, God rested. We miss that man was created on the sixth day, and prior to man doing any work at all, he rested and Sabbathed with God on the seventh day. He spent time in communion and relationship with God before he ever put his hand to the proverbial plow. Rather than being pulled along in a current of chaos, Jesus lived out of the overflow. This is what work as worship truly looks like. Having been filled with love, mercy, hope, generosity, and joy of God, the work we put our hands and minds to spills out of that overflow as a thank offering to the giver of all good things.
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