Day of rest

Moses told the Israelites that the Lord had said:

The Sabbath belongs to me. Now I command you and your descendants to always obey the laws of the Sabbath. By doing this, you will know that I have chosen you as my own.      Exodus 31:12-13

Before the Ten Commandments, there was no day of rest. 

"No ancient society before the Jews had a day of rest." As one who observes the Shabbat, I can attest to its life-changing effects. Those who live without such septimanal punctuation are emptier and less resourceful." - Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews.

If you read between the lines you will see something else in the day of rest.  The centrality of human freedom exists there.  For those who work seven days a week, even if they are paid millions, are slaves.

My first encounter with such a strong belief came with the Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, who refused to run a medal race because it was held on Sunday.

A day of rest enables us to be better equipped to handle difficult and intrusive events in our lives.I'm not arguing the accuracy of the adjective; I am, though, contesting the way in which it is used to flatter and express sympathy. "The poor pastor," we say. "So devoted to his flock; the work is endless and he sacrifices himself so unstintingly." But the word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife, or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront. Hilary of Tours diagnosed pastoral busyness as "irreligiosa solicitudo pro Deo," a blasphemous anxiety to do God's work for him. - Eugene Peterson, The Unbusy Pastor

 The metaphors Jesus used for the life of ministry are frequently images of the single, the small, and the quiet, which have effects far in excess of their appearance: salt, leaven, seed. Our culture publicizes the opposite emphasis: the big, the multitudinous, the noisy. It is, then, a strategic necessity that pastors deliberately ally themselves with the quiet, poised harpooners, and not leap, frenzied, to the oars. There is far more need that we develop the skills of the harpooner than the muscles of the oarsman. It is far more biblical to learn quietness and attentiveness before God than to be overtaken by what John Oman named the twin perils of ministry, flurry and worry. For flurry dissipates energy, and worry constipates it. - Eugene Peterson, The Unbusy Pastor

John Ortberg asked Dallas Willard, what he needed to do to be spiritually healthy. Willard said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life, for hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our world today.” (Find the story here.)

Taking a day of rest is not a suggestion but a command to cease our work.

The harder we work, the less loved we feel.

We also do not listen well or respond to needs that are being expressed to us.

Taking a day of rest is not the cure for our anxieties and discontents, but it is a tangible, weekly reminder that God is God and we are not.

Sit quietly

French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal believed humans should learn to be quiet more often...

 “All the unhappiness of men arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”

Written in the 1600's many would later define this sentence to mean that we are avoiding stillness and solitude because we fear the truth. 

We might interpret further that Pascal is saying that without entertainment and distraction diverting us, we would be forced to be alone with the truth of our existence.

There is an ineluctable tension between our aspirations and our anticipations and the reality of our lives. 
Pascal unmasks diversion as an attempt to escape reality, and an indication of something unstable and exceedingly out-of-kilter in the human condition. (Douglas Groothuis)

Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it. - Pascal

It is, for Pascal, revelatory of a moral and spiritual malaise begging for an adequate explanation. Our condition is “inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.” We humans face an incorrigible mortality that drives us to distractions designed to overcome our worries. Pascal notes that “if man were [naturally] happy, the less he were diverted the happier he would be, like the saints and God.” (Douglas Groothuis)

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man. - Pascal

 Worse yet, our own sensoriam may break down as sight dwindles, hearing ebbs, olfactory awareness fades, and all manner of bodily pleasures become harder to find and easier to lose. (Douglas Groothuis)   

"Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”- Ecclesiastes 12:1

Maybe it is time to sit quietly just because our roots, as complex as they might be, are dried up.

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen
justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

Disappointment all I endeavour end?

    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

"O Lord send rain" is our longing and our plea as we sit quietly in our room.
 

 

Prayer of a Lion

Steven Curtis Chapman - "Warrior"

Lord,
I am King,
that is the law.
You know that it is difficult
to wear a crown.
Some people, in their leadership,
recommend love.
How naïve!
I know how to rule
over the creatures,
they have respect
only for strength.
Let us say
that fear is good.
And for me
to make the plain tremble
with my roar,
how delightful!
Yet
I would not do anything baseless
or mean.
I know the price of a noble heart.
That is why,
Lord,
I love Your grace
and try to measure up to it.
        ~ Carmen Bernos de Gasztold