Work & Rest

 

This verse on rest is profound in that it bases our taking time to take a break from our seemingly unending work, both in and out of the home, to stop and rest, but the implications are that we enter the same rest that our heavenly Father took from the Creation work of the cosmos, earth and all that lives. We enter, not into our rest (where we can find relaxation and recuperation from the daily grind of life), but into “His rest” also. Therefore, it is not just a rest of the physical and finite (body), but a rest of the spiritual and infinite (mind, will and emotions of the soul).  His rest revealed in the Divine complexity and peacefulness of nature, revealed in His Holy Word by special revelation through the Holy Spirit that produces the fruit of love, joy, peace patience, kindness , goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), and revealed in His Son, our Lord God incarnate -our fully God and fully man in hypostatic union, our Redeemer/Savior Jesus, the Christ – “Immanuel” – God with us”, who tells us: Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Work is an action. “Entering” rest (consciously taking time out) is an action too.  Rest is a “state of being”. Resting is inaction that can be managed, measured and maintained. We grow tired of the growing restlessness of the constant call to the new and improved radical lifestyle of the “Rat Race” today. Not that work is not a bad thing; God worked in Creation of the Universe and everything in it, and still works in Divine Providence. But on the seventh day God rested from all His work (Genesis 2:1-3), and so should we.  We were designed and made to work in life and do “good’ works.  But, like almost everything, we can turn a good thing into a bad thing by going too far or doing too much. Also, we work and perform “good works”, not to earn our way into heaven, but because the Child of God, those who accept the free gift of salvation unto eternal life through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the Cross for our sins, already have citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. Our life and work flows out of gratitude that we are “saved”, Hallelujah! Saved by the mercy and grace of our Creator, heavenly Father through faith, created to do “good works”.

Ephesians 2:8-10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Without a little “R and R” (Rest and Recuperation), we “run the tank dry” of our energy with never-ending activities that run us ragged, so that we do not run at peak and optimum efficiency in mind, body and soul. We need a balanced life of both work and rest - relaxing “down-time”. That is what the Lord intended for us.

In Christ, Brian