The Hard Work of Rest

Sandwiched between the unspeakable drama of that Friday and unutterable victory of Sunday stretch out the interminable hours of an eternity-long Saturday.

The Sabbath day.

The God-prescribed day of rest for all the Lord’s people.

It seems like rest is the last thing on your mind following the triumph of evil.  

Rest is the last thing you want to do.  I know that rest is the last thing I want to do.

I want to do something.  Anything.

Anything to make things better.

Anything to make things less …worse.

Less… hopeless?

Anything that makes me feel less useless and less powerless.

I want to keep my hands and feet busy, just to keep up with the racing mind that refuses to quiet down... that just can’t wrap itself around unjust suffering, the murder of the innocent; the chaos and confusion of unmitigated hate…

… and, irony of ironies, done in the name of God.

The loss seems unredeemable.  The damage permanent.

How can good God allow this…?

It’s hard – hard – work, entering this rest.

In the midst of swirling unanswerable questions, the endless loop of Why? Why? Why? , this rest forces me to look away from what I do… 

...from what you do…

... from what evil can do and is doing…

Not in ostrich-kind of denial…

Not in some blind don’t-worry-be-happy naïve optimism…

But in faith – a rock-solid conviction that there is more to this story. What you and I see is not all there is.

This command to rest invites me to w-rest-le until my eyes are deliberately focused away from all that we do – terrifying or impotent as it may be, and I am able to take a deep breath – in and out – and look up to what God does.

For there is more, much more to that… to what God does – the God-story - than meets our little eye. 

And with God who was willing to go the length of the Cross for us, there is no telling what He might be willing to do to get us out of our graves.