Is It Time to Rest?

It’s been a busy season. What are your plans to rest?

I don’t mean merely to nap or to take “time off.” Nor just to downshift one gear or gently tap on the brakes to slow things down a little, but to rest.

Few would argue that after a busy season, it’s a good idea to catch some rest. But the Bible takes that good idea further and uses the word “sabbath” (shabbat). It’s so important that God actually commands it—it’s the fourth of the Ten Commandments.

In Deuteronomy 5:15, we discover one of the foundational reasons for shabbat: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

In the ancient world (as in other eras), the only people who worked all the time without rest were slaves. God has told his people that because of His redemptive work, we are no longer slaves. We are free in Him. Rest from work is one of the ways He calls us to live out our identity. Biblically speaking, not to rest regularly is to imitate the life of a slave and to betray who he has made us to be in Christ.

It’s very simple: the redeemed rest.

Adele Calhoun has said, “If you aren’t resting, you are a slave to something.” I find that uncomfortably convicting! When we neglect this command and the important underlying reasons for it, we force a hard question: what or whom are we really serving?

The Bible never tells us what to do with the time in which we deliberately set work aside as “a sabbath to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 5:14). It merely tells us to do it. The rest is between us and God. The emphasis in scripture is clearly on the fact that God is our provider when we work and when we do not. And resting in that fact is a critical way for us to make room in our lives for God to remind us of who we are and who we are not.

We are who we were created and redeemed to be, and we serve our Creator and Redeemer best, when rest is a rhythmic part of our lives.

So, let’s circle back to the question: It’s been a busy season—what are your plans to rest?