The Practice of Rest

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

So last Sunday, Ella and Charlotte, two of my girls called me and said, Hey dad, we're gonna make a run to Taco Bell and then we're gonna come over and we're gonna watch Pitch Perfect together. I was like, yes, we had a delightful afternoon laughing hysterically, eating Taco Bell and just being together and that was a great picture of rest.

So we're closing up our series on spiritual practices, and today I'm gonna talk about the practice of rest. I think a lot of times when we think about religious practices, we think of rules and regulations and things that are just sort of like overly stuffy. But what I wanna help you see today is that rest is something that is actually delightful and fun and enjoyable.

Sometimes we miss it because we don't enter into it intentionally, and I think that's one of the key differences. I'm gonna allow. Pitch Perfect to inspire us. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm gonna tell you a story from the gospels in which Jesus gives a teaching on the Sabbath. That is of course the day of rest.

And then I'm gonna illustrate that through Exodus and God's teaching to Israel about how they're to honor and follow the Sabbath, to give us a picture of what it means to enter into rest.

So as the story goes, Jesus and his disciples are traveling along the countryside, and as they walk through a field filled with wheat, they grab the heads of grain and twirl them in their hands in order to get the seed to fall out, and then they eat it. Somehow the Pharisees are watching all of this, and the Pharisees are like, Jesus, what are you doing? You are now defiling the Sabbath because you guys are doing work. And Jesus is like, what are you talking about? Don't you remember when David and his soldiers had to go into the temple and eat the Presence because they needed food?

You're missing the point of what the Sabbath is really all about. And he says the Sabbath was created for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. What an interesting thing to say. So how is it that the Sabbath was created for humanity? How is it that rest was created for humanity? Well, I think that God actually sketches it out in Exodus. As Moses sort of relays the the call to honoring the Sabbath to the Israelites. It gives us a picture of what rest is really supposed to do. And I think rest helps us in three ways. One, it anchors us to the peace and power of God. Two, it's about compassion. Compassion to ourselves and compassion to others.

And then lastly, the practice of rest is something that offers us an identity. Let me sketch out each one a little bit more. So I said that rest allows us to anchor to the power and peace of God. What we see in the creation story, and this is how Moses talks about it in Exodus, is that God created through six days, and then on the seventh day rested, when we think about that rhythm, what we see is that God creates, and at the end of that day, he says it's good and he rests. And then the next day he creates and it says it's good, and then he rests. And then ultimately after the sixth day, which he creates humanity and all of creation is finished, he says, now it is very good. And then he rests and enters into a longer rest.

And so in this way, when we take up that similar habit, that similar rhythm of working and resting, we ourselves are entering into God's rhythm. And it does a couple things for us. One, it reminds us that we are not the creators, but we are creatures, and so we need this habit of work and rest.

It also anchors us to the goodness of God, because there's a part within each of us that thinks either through worry or work or constant striving, that somehow we can take care of all the things. But instead, what God says is, no, no, no. You need some level of rest. Rest for your soul, rest for your heart, rest for your mind.

And so you need to purposely enter into activities that allow that restoration to happen. One of the key things I think, is to recognize that there's just a difference between rest and checking out. So checking out is all the sort of forms of behavior that we do to numb ourselves, to avoid. But I think rest is when we intentionally choose to do something like Taco Bell and watching Pitch Perfect.

Or for me, cooking is something that I intentionally choose on Sunday afternoon. Technically, I am doing work, but the experience of it is something in which, in the chopping and the searing and the braising and then the hosting of a meal, it's restful for me. It's restful for my mind. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. It's creative.

And so that's what I mean by it's important for us to enter into rest on purpose. And so what might that look like for you? What are the things that you can do that fuel you, that restore you? And how might you intentionally choose those things in the midst of your rhythms of work and non-work? How can you enter into rest to experience that holy, sacred ground?

Second, it's rest is about compassion. And so the teaching in Exodus is that you are not to work neither you, your spouse, your kids, your servants, your animals, even the foreigners among you the text says. And this is the reminder that rest is about compassion.

That all of us as human beings need that rest and restoration. It's also a challenge to us to know that sometimes as people with privilege and wealth, it is easier for us to rest than those who are weak and in need. In the ancient world, kids weren't held up with such reverence as they are in modern America.

Rather, kids were just seen as an additional contribution to the farming and the work that needed to be done. And so as God sketches out that neither your kids, nor your servants, nor your livestock, nor the foreigners among you will do work. What God is saying is that rest is needed for everyone, including those who have less than you.

And so the idea of creating rest for compassion is something that we need to be thinking about, and I think each of us can do it in a different way. But I want you to think about, as you enter back into work, remind yourself that it's something that you can grab a hold of. So if you are a leader at a company, you can create rest through your HR policies and the amount of time off that you give people and how you pay people.

If you're maybe a teacher and you're in the school, you can try to create rest from the anxiety and stress that so many of our students feel. You can operate your classroom in a way that it feels restful to them. And then of course for each of us, there's a compassionate part of creating rest in our own homes.

How do we do that? So ask yourself, what might it look like to create environments of rest so that you can enter into this practice and experience the goodness of God?

Lastly, rest is part of our identity In our world. We like to identify with different sports teams, and so we have hats and jerseys and all kinds of stuff, and we root for that team and our identity in part fused with that team.

What God says in Exodus to the Israelites is that their honoring of the Sabbath will be something that identifies them as the people of God. And so here what we learn is that rest, the practice of rest, the intentional practice of entering into grace and goodness is a habit, is an identifier of the people of God.

And so we wanna be the kind of people that know how to do that intentionally. So my last challenge to you is this, as you come upon Thanksgiving and you have all the different pieces and parts that go into that. Make Thursday a chance where you enter into rest on purpose. Allow the turkey and the football watching and the time together and the pie to all be sacred because you're intentionally entering into them as a chance to give thanks and appreciate the grace and goodness of God and all that God has done.

Hey, looking forward to getting back with you to start the Advent series. I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving week that you're able to experience God and enter into some of that practice of rest. Take care. See you soon.