work + rest

A year ago God used a couple of books to really speak to an area of need and defeat in my life. I was rereading my notes for months, feasting on ideas I’d always known, but that were finally penetrating and changing me from deep within. (Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.)

This year I began a fresh Bible reading initiative — albeit a bit scattered and probably only discernible to me — but one obvious fresh start was Genesis 1. I read it slowly, stopped several times, read it again, pondered for a few days… There is so much to discover about who God is, what is in His heart, and how we were made to be right in those first few pages. So much calling and identity revealed!

This time through, I was struck by the instruction laid out for us as workers and creators, made in the image of God, following His example:

Why did God take 6 days for the work of creation? Why one element at a time, one day at a time? He could have simply spoken it all into being with a single word. He is not limited in any way. So why?

Could it be that right from the beginning, He was teaching us how to work? Was He speaking to me (and those of us who tend to be a bit too driven for our own good) about how our endeavors and tasks must fall into the proper place and time? That we do what is good for today and then sleep, calling it good (and enough, by His grace), and rising again to do the next day’s work?

That is something I felt break in my life over the past year: the sense that in order to be succeeding as homemaker, I needed to finish completely every single day, and that undone laundry, house cleaning, kitchen work, all of it, was a verdict of failure.

There is self sufficiency that is constantly trying to enslave us, and so we actively are called to enter the rest provided us through Christ.

Maybe your propensity isn’t towards laundry-pile-enslavement, but is there something today you’re laboring under, a lack of completion that whispers the condemning sentence of “failure”? We are called to work and stewardship, but also to rest and order. He gives us a day to work, and a night to rest — and in Him, we can do just that: rest.

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Related:

life and peace
Teaching From Rest
Every Good Endeavor

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