Tag: Rest

Rest Reflections

On By BrianIn Rest Reflections

restofgodGod made us from dust.  We’re never too far from our origins.  The apostle Paul says we’re only clay pots – dust mixed with water, passed through fire. Hard, yes, but brittle too. Knowing this, God gave us the gift of Sabbath – not just a day, but an orientation, a way of seeing and knowing.  Sabbath-keeping is a form of mending. It’s mortar in the joints. Keep Sabbath, or else break too easily, and oversoon. Keep it, otherwise our dustiness consumes us, becomes us, and we end up able to hold exactly nothing.

– Mark Buchanan in The Rest of God

A New Start

On By BrianIn Uncategorized

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have not been posting much for the last several months.  Life has been busy.  And I’ve wondered how important it is to do this blogging thing. At the same time, I have been thinking about what this blog could look like, what I’d like to do with it, and what would be feasible to do.  I had planned to re-boot it, as it were, with the new year, but didn’t get there.  I think I am ready to re-start this week.

Once again, I plan to have collections from other blogs on Wednesdays and Saturdays – recommended readings for our growth in loving God and people in response to his love for us.  Thursdays will continue good quotes from books I have been reading.

Fridays will start a new feature I am calling Rest Reflections.  I have been reading a lot about rest, why we need it, what keeps us from it, and what it looks like. I definitely swing towards the workaholic side of the pendulum, but I’m finding I need to slow down and rest.  So I’m trying to learn what that looks like, and each week I’ll be sharing helpful quotes I find about what I am discovering about rest.  Frenzied, hurried, weary saints don’t love well, so this is a topic that fits well with the theme of this blog.

Tuesdays begins another regular feature called Preaching Point.  As a pastor, I spend a lot of time preparing and delivering sermons, and I want to refine my preaching.  So again, I have plans to read a lot about preaching this year – this is my second reading focus for 2019 – and I plan to share helpful quotes each Tuesday.

Mondays, finally, will be a variety of posts. Once a month will be a “Scripture Speaks to Our Suffering” post – a monthly passage of Scripture to ponder, even memorize, to help us in our suffering.  Also, we will return to the Passion Catechism with Q&A’s and related verses to help us learn and know the basic Christian Faith. And then finally, I hope to share some personal reflections on rest and preaching from what I have been reading.

So that’s the plan.  We’ll see how it goes.  If any of this looks helpful to you, I invite you to join me, or continue to join me, on this journey.

Why We Rest

On By BrianIn PASSION Reflections1 Comment

A couple of days ago I looked at why we work.  But we need to balance our work with rest.  So today I want to consider why we rest:

  • To follow the creation pattern.  Genesis 1-2 tells us that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh.  He also created day (when we work) and night (when we rest).  Built into the very fabric of creation is this pattern of work and rest.
  • To recharge.  God wasn’t tired when he rested on the seventh day.  But we get tired.  Work is toilsome, and we need time to recharge.  Every day, we spend about eight hours sleeping because we need to recharge.  Physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually we get tired.  So we need to rest to recharge.
  • To rejoice in our work.  After creation, God looked at all he had made and he deemed it very good (Genesis 1:31).  He found pleasure in it.  We should follow his example and stop working long enough to find joy in what we have accomplished.
  • To refocus our trust.  If we are trusting in ourselves or our work, we will find it difficult to rest.  There is always more to be done.  But if we trust in God, we can stop and rest, remembering that he will take care of us.  Psalm 127:2 tells us: “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”  We need not be anxious about our work.  If we trust God, we can lay down at night and sleep.  We can rest.
  • To grow in relationships.  If we love God and people, we will rest from our work so we can focus on God and people.  We will rest so we can spend time with God in His Word, and prayer, and praise.  We will rest so we can spend time with family and friends talking, and laughing, and sharing, and playing together.  We need to rest to have time to build loving relationships.

There are lots of tired frazzled people in our world.  But Christians should be different.  God calls us to take time to rest.

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Tomorrow I am preaching about work and rest.  Here are some good related posts for your weekend reading:

The Purpose of Work – Gene Edward Veith (via Gospel Coalition)
According to Luther, the purpose of every vocation is to love and serve one’s neighbor. The farmer tills the ground to provide food to sustain his neighbor’s life. The craftsman, the teacher, the lawyer—indeed, everyone who occupies a place in the division of labor—is providing goods and services that neighbors need. This is God’s providential ordering of society. But for a Christian, the service rendered can become animated with love.

Is the Sabbath Still Relevant – Ray Ortlund
If we did set apart one day each week for rejuvenation in God, we would immediately add to every year over seven weeks of vacation.  And not for doing nothing but for worship, for friends, for mercy, for an afternoon nap, for reading and thinking, for lingering around the dinner table and sharing good jokes and tender words and personal prayers.

Helpless Sacks of Sand – Tim Challies
It came to me that the fundamental reality of sleep is that it assures us that we are not God. Apparently we all need the ongoing reminder. Psalm 127:2 says “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” We need sleep, and peaceful sleep is a good gift of a good God. Meanwhile, Psalm 121 says “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” We need sleep; God does not. Rather, the unsleeping God grants sleep to the people he loves, the people who need it so badly.

Enjoying Rest, Now and in the Life to Come – Randy Alcorn
What feels better than putting your head on the pillow after a hard day’s work? (How about what it will feel like after a hard life’s work?) It’s good to sit back and have a glass of iced tea, feel the sun on your face, or tilt back in your recliner and close your eyes. It’s good to have nothing to do but read a good book or take your dog for a walk or listen to your favorite music and tell God how grateful you are for his kindness. Rest is good. So good that God built it into his creation and his law.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day gathering with your local church to worship our Lord, and resting from a good week of work!