Rest.  It never comes from pushing.  There are some things that only grown in stillness—or silliness—that only flourish in rest, or laughter.  No one plants a garden and then keeps plowing the ground.  You have to wait.  You have to let things lie still, let seeds break open and spin their roots downward, push their stems upward.  You have to let earth and sky and rain do what only they can do.

            It’s no different with us.  Most of the things we need in order to be most fully alive never come from pushing.  They grow in rest.  Kindness, joy, compassion, friendship, courage, hope, trust, understanding.  These are essential to character and community.  Yet none of them takes root in busyness and striving.  They tend, rather, to wither under those conditions.  Endless busyness disturbs the roots of virtue and, instead, breeds suspicion, anger, frustration, despair, cowardice, loneliness.  Without some way of replenishing the virtues, we easily become weary in doing good.

            God made a man.  He put him to work in the garden, to plow, to prune, to harvest, to name.  All was good.  Very good.  Except one thing:  The man was alone.  It was not good for him to be alone.  It was, in fact, the first and deepest problem in the universe, a personal crisis that marred the whole of creation.

            How do you solve a problem like that?  “The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh.  Then the Lord God made a women from the rib he had taken out of man.”  (Genesis 2:21-22)

            The answer to the man’s deepest need and longing came from within the man, but it was not available to the man through his own efforts.  God had to draw it out of him while he slept.  He had to cease.  He had to rest.

            It never comes from pushing.

(Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild, pages 221-22)

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It is easy to live in anxiety and in a rush.  When I don't rest I have a tendency to spoil everyone else's rest!  I want to learn to rest more in God, to really lean into Him, to taste more of Him, and to embrace slowing down to listen for Him.  As I lean into Him and learn to put my entire weight into Him--who He is and what He does--I find myself more fully alive and discover more of how God intended me to live.  "Come to Me," Jesus said, "all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  He doesn't invite me to mindless idleness, or even to sleep.  He invites me to come to Him and receive, to be awake in Him.  Even as I go about the daily rhythms and requirements of life--preparing and eating food, cleaning my life spaces, going and returning, welcoming conversations--He invites me to receive His life so that I can fully live and experience all that He has for me. 

September 19, 2009