“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:9-10)
I receive a flu shot each year during the same doctor’s appointment of my annual physical exam. Unfortunately, this year my exam isn’t until the day after Christmas. That means two things: I’ll step on the scale like a side of beef with the excess Christmas fudge refusing to let go of my belly, and secondly, I have a welcome mat laid out for any flu bug that needs a home. I still have some hope that the first thing won’t happen, but the second became a reality this past weekend.
For three days, I had to rest, moving from misery to moaning to moments of feeling normal to recovery. My new resident had my full attention, and all I could do was…rest.
Rest. That word that gets associated with unpleasant things like arrest, cardiac arrest, restraint, restrict, restlessness, and “rest areas” along highways that get closed because of illegal activity occurring there. Rest is what we need and what we so often push to the back of the top shelf in the cupboard. We’ll get to it…sometime.
When I was in Israel many years ago, I remember the elevator of our Jerusalem hotel switched to Shabbat mode for the Jewish sabbath. That meant it would go one floor at a time, the doors would open and close, and it would proceed to the next floor. We were on the 9th floor so it took us a while to get down to breakfast, which consisted of only cold foods. Nothing had to be cooked. The emphasis was on following the Jewish law, restrictions (there’s that word again). In other words, forced rest. What it made me ponder was how easy it is in our culture to push rest out of the way. Sometimes we need to be forced into it.
For followers of Jesus, I’ve noticed that the specialness of the Sabbath has gradually been eaten away like an eroding shoreline. I write this as one of the guilty. In a culture of convenience, it is easy to run to the store to pick up hamburger buns for the afternoon cookout or head to the mall to scour the sales. Youth athletic contests dot our Sunday mornings. NFL games have even pushed up their kickoff times. Sunday is no longer a day of rest but of taking care of all those things we didn’t get to in the other six days of the week.
Golly gee! For us to rest at all, not just on Sunday, is a foreign concept for many of us. We need to take an online course on “resting.” Many of us have bought into the mindset that says if I’m not doing something, I’m being a slouch, a slackard, on the road to worthlessness.
And here’s the thing! Are we any better off for our hyper-living lifestyle? Has the condition of the world improved with the constant buzzing of human bee activity? Has “holy space” become an antiquated idea that has had its day?
Getting the flu caused me to realize my limitations, my humanness, my vulnerability, and the necessity of putting on the brakes.
Words from WW Blog 