Take a few deep breaths. Inhale deeply, hold for a moment, and exhale. Do this a few times.
According to Google’s AI “Deep breathing can have a significant positive effect on your body by reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, calming the nervous system, improving focus, and promoting relaxation by sending signals to the brain to trigger a relaxation response, making it a valuable tool for managing stress and anxiety.” Deep breathing can provide a sense of rest.
And now I want you to take a moment to consider what do you need to feel at rest? Is there a particular place that comes to mind? Are there particular sounds or music that creates a sense of rest for you? Is there a particular time of day? What makes you feel at rest?
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Some years ago, before we worked at The Hermitage, the contemplative retreat center in Michigan, June and I volunteered there while David and Naomi, then the directors, were on sabbatical. Upon their return I approached David and asked “Did you receive in faith the gift of rest?”
This may seem like a curious question, and I’m sure I was attempting to be a clever, but the words of this question were familiar to David. The words, adapted from Matthew 11:28-30
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
We used an adaptation of these once a week when we used the Hermitage Affirmation, a morning prayer liturgy drafted by Hermitage founder Gene Herr and still used each week. The words we prayed read:
Teach us, Jesus,
to hear you,
to come with the heavy loads we feel,
to be yoked with you,
to be taught by you,
to learn what things really matter,
and to receive in faith the gift of rest.
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.
After years of volunteering and then working at The Hermitage I eventually learned that the primary thing I was welcoming people to or inviting people to, was to receive the gift of rest. While rest may seem like a trivial thing, “Are we really doing all this just so people can take a nap?” but people came there, guests and staff with too much busyness and striving and anxiety racing around in their heads and bodies. To let go of all those things and receive the gift of a nap is truly a gift of resting in God’s care. I believe that in rest, in silence, in slowness we make ourselves available to God. A life in deep relationship with God is not a life of striving, but of receiving, not of accomplishing, but of allowing. Rest is a gift to receive and not a state that can be achieved. In rest, we let go of ambitions and the desire to control and learn to improvise with the Spirit.
I’ll confess that it was and is much easier for me to offer the gift of rest than it is for me to receive the gift. I am really not very good at rest. In the past I thought of rest as synonymous with relaxation. Rest was a pleasant, if at times irresponsible luxury. Rest could easily become a distraction from responsibility and productivity. Rest was good if you were tired, but too much resting was a sign of laziness.
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Related to rest is the topic of leisure and especially the idea of holy leisure. Rest can be not doing things, but it can also involve doing things that nurture our souls and engage our spirits. For some of us, when we want to leave behind the frenzied business of our day and rest we turn to our devices. These often don’t demand any critical engagement, but they are programmed to distract us and give us an experience that is anything but restful. Scrolling social media or flipping channels is not restful and is not holy leisure. Activities of holy leisure include play, and creativity, exploration and discovery, and even casual eating with friends. These activities should be non-anxious and even non goal oriented, but rather they open us to experience God’s gift of this world in new ways. These activities teach us to improvise and play with the Spirits leading.
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work God had done.
God puts rest within the heart of creation with God’s own resting on the seventh day of creation. Of course, God could have continued working and creating. God could have done anything and everything, but God chose rest.
Deuteronomy 5:13-14 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work — you or your son or your daughter or your manservant or your maidservant or your ox or your ass or any of your cattle or the sojourner who is within your gates — that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you”
One Catholic author I read wrote “The Sabbath is not understood merely as “time off.” It’s not a break in an unending process of production and consumption: It’s the climax of the week. Whereas the world sees the weekend as a time to get ready to go back to work on Monday, the Church sees the work week as a preparation for Sunday Mass.”
Tricia Hersey is the founder of the Nap Ministry and wrote the wonderful book “Rest is Resistance: a Manifesto”
She sees rest not only a nice thing to restore our energy, but for her “Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism.” We are lead to believe there is not enough, and this creates anxiety and unrest. “We believe rest is a luxury, privilege, and an extra treat we can give to ourselves after suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Rest isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to survive and thrive. Rest isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human. Rest is a divine right. Rest is a human right.”
This book reminds me that the pinnacle of God’s week of creation is not humanity, but rest. Rest reclaims our bodies and our time from being mere economic tools serving the idol of productivity. “Much of our resistance to rest, sleep, and slowing down is an ego problem. You believe you can and must do it all because of our obsession with individualism and our disconnection to spirituality,” Hersey writes.
Rest is an image of salvation. Rest is sabbath. Rest is shalom.
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
My 21st century self, however, is trained in anxiety and striving, where rest is a an irresponsible luxury available for purchase by the rich. The “rest” capitalism sells is only a tool for you to “recharge” and return as a more effective producer/consumer. We rest in order to work.
My Mennonite self is trained in the virtues of hard-working service, and the sense of always more to do. Is a well-rested Mennonite an oxymoron? Is it heretical?
Rest can come with feelings of guilt for all the work others have to do in order for me to rest. Rest can cause us to question our self-worth. “What if I rest from work for a few days and nobody notices?”
As attractive as the gift of rest is, we find it so hard to receive. Our restless hearts are addicted to self-validating busyness. I find it hard to practice rest because it can be difficult for me to accept that somehow the world could survive a day or even a week without my near constant attention. This is foolishness. Yet, God continues to extend the gift rest waiting for us to empty and extend our hands. May we learn to value the liberating quality of our rest more than the quantity of our productivity.
“Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.” (Ps 16:9)
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Rest is a product of letting go of our need to shape each moment of our day; letting go of ambitions and anxieties; letting go of finding our value in our productivity; letting go of our sense of how indispensable we are.
Solitude and silence are often a catalysts to rest. Desert/wilderness places are also places of encounter. The Bible is filled with stories of people who in the desert or wilderness encounter the divine, from Moses to Hagar and Elisha. And Jesus regularly goes away by himself to a deserted place to pray – to be in conversation with God. Even after this following story of feeding the people he sends the disciples off and goes up a mountain to pray.
Rest is intimately related to trust. Without trust rest is elusive. In order to rest we must trust that life will be okay without us being useful. We must trust that the emails and texts that go unanswered while away will still be there when we return and that many of their “urgent” problems will have already resolved themselves. Rest also comes when we can trust that food will be available when we are hungry, and a warm bed will be available when tired. We rest in the arms of the ones we love, because we trust them.
“Our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.” Augustine.
But rest is not a product of our intention and work, rest is ultimately a gift from God. As we saw in Matthew 11 text I read earlier, we are to come to God and give God our weariness and business, and in turn, God will give us rest. The goal of our journey is to rest in the heart of God, the most trustworthy one.
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Jesus and the disciples go away to a deserted place for rest and immediately people show up and the place is no long deserted and no longer restful. And Jesus resumes his work, and I’m guessing the disciples were not to pleased by Jesus’ compassion. As the day is beginning to draw to an end the disciples are concerned “‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’”
They are telling Jesus we are in a deserted wilderness place and where there is little to sustain us. There is no rest here. But Jesus does not mirror their anxiety. He finds out what food they have and “39Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass.” Did you note those last words? They sat down on green grass. This deserted, wilderness place with few resources is now a place of reclining on green grass . A place of verdancy and life. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
It is hard to find rest, however, on an empty stomach. Having a meal with food enough to be filled creates a sense of rest in all of us. It’s the cause of many a Sunday afternoon nap.
This deserted place becomes of place of sitting on the green grass and being fed. And all who ate were filled. This is a place of rest offered for all the people. “Thou preparest a table before me; my cup runneth over”
In a place of aridity, anxiety, and hunger Jesus provides an image of the rest God offers to us all.
‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’
Paying attention to the world around us right now feels relentless and exhausting. You wake up in the morning and think today will be a quiet day only to be hit with some new ridiculous, chaotic, and dangerous pronouncement that sets you on edge for the rest of the day. And nobody seems to know what new craziness the next day will hold.
But even in these times and especially in these times, and even in these arid wilderness places where how we will get through the next days seems in question, Jesus invites us to come away and receive rest. The rest that only God can provide. The rest of letting go and being held and embraced by God’s loving arms.
