This Summer, Take a Real Rest
When you think of summer, you probably imagine something similar to a summer beer commercial. Beaches at sunset, sunlight dappling through palm trees, volleyball with friends, light hiking, reading an entertaining book, swimming in clear water, and nobody seems to have a care in the world. At the end of the school year, many of us justify long nights under fluorescent lights in a library by promising to rest and recuperate over the summer. That summery image we cling to can become almost intoxicating as we await a reprieve from the academic pressure cooker.
But when June rolls around, that image tends to be quickly shattered by reality. Students with internships frequently find themselves sitting in an office for upwards of eight hours a day, five times a week, with minimal pay and mountains of work. By the end of the day, you, completely exhausted, feel much closer to that desk in the library than a beach in Tahiti. If that isn’t you, then maybe you’re at home, working part-time or just taking a summer off. It sounded relaxing, and it was – for two weeks. But now your sleep schedule is thrown off, you’re struggling to meet the goals you set for yourself, and your comfortable, familiar home is starting to feel a bit like a cage. Restless, you can’t wait for the school year to roll around. If you’re one of the few people whose summer does match Corona or Bud Light’s expectations, you might be finding that the vacation life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, there’s plenty of fun to be had, there’s little to disturb your relaxation, and you’re getting plenty of rest and exercise, but there’s a stirring in your soul that seems to crave something with more . . . substance. Wherever you find yourself, there’s a strong chance that you, too, are asking where to find true rest.
Much of our confusion about how to find rest stems from our tendency to oversimplify it. True rest is not contained in simply the satisfaction that accompanies knowing that you have been productive, nor in the mere cessation of work, nor in leisure activities alone. True rest requires all of these things in tandem with one another.1 In order to have peace of mind, we must have worked. In order to have a bodily peace, we must stop doing that work. In order to have a spiritual peace, we must engage with the world – God’s creation. Although this framework for rest is applicable everywhere, as it is logically entailed by the definition of rest, in practice rest like this cannot be formulaic. Everybody leads a different sort of life, and when we make time to stop our normal patterns of work, we will all need to do different things to nurture the parts of our souls that we so often neglect. There isn’t one perfect list of activities that will make you ready for work on Monday. So maybe Coors’ picture of rest is pretty close to what you need, and maybe it isn’t. Rest must never be a burden, and it cannot be a mere checklist.2
But, you may point out, if that is all that rest is, then rest is really not a thing at all. It is just a term for the random collection of different things that people start to do when they stop working and start playing. There is, however, one unifying characteristic of all rest: worship.3
What does that mean? I mean that in our rest we ought to recognize the glory of creation as a reflection of the one who made it. We should appreciate the beauty of a sunset, the awesome physicality of recreation, and the joy and love found in our friendships. Taking time to remember, experience, and appreciate these things naturally leads us to praise the God who made them and whose beauty they reflect only dimly.4 Through this we recover our sense of wonder at the world and become more disposed to joy and gratitude for it even while we are not resting. We are also to appreciate the work that we have accomplished. People are meant to do work, and our creations point towards God, whom we imitate when we use the gifts that He gave us. This is why art of all kinds (music, poetry, oration, etc.) features so prominently in church services – we are using His gifts to us for His glory. It is only when we acknowledge that work is an imperfect reflection of a perfect God, stop making it about ourselves, and humbly offer our work to God that we will be able to cast off the anxiety, stress, frustration, and hopelessness that so often accompany our work. Finally, we ought to spend time directly with God when we rest by praying, reading Scripture, and offering praise to Him. Such things allow us to be filled, by the Holy Spirit, with a joy and peace too deep for words. Moreover, they sanctify us, allowing us to live in greater obedience to God as we were meant to, gradually eliminating a great source of unease in our lives.
This is true rest – a rest that is not merely a pause in our lives, but one that refreshes us with living water and prepares us to work once again. Since rest is not work, it is necessary that it entails a completion of work, a cessation of work, and non-work activities. Though there is no formula for true rest, it is and ought to be defined by its posture of worship in actions both explicitly and implicitly aimed toward God. We live in a day and age where work is anything but neglected and it is time to recover our sense of rest and satisfy the longing of our souls.5 This rest is true and universal. We must be intentional with our rest, actively cultivating a sense of the divine in all that we do. Although I have dedicated a number of words to explaining that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to rest, I am bold enough to suggest that it would be good for all of us to dedicate one day every week to partaking in, as Hebrews 4 terms it, a Sabbath rest.
Brothers and sisters, take a true rest before your weary souls collapse.
Cf. Psalm 8, Psalm 139, and Psalm 148
1 Genesis 2:1-3; God rests after working for six days. He “finished” his work, took a rest “from all his work,” and “blessed” the seventh day, thus setting a pattern for human work that we are to emulate, per Exodus 20:8 and Mark 2:27.
2 Mark 2:27
3 John 5:15-17; Jesus explains that both he and the Father work on the Sabbath (reinforced by Hebrews 1). Thus, although Exodus commands us to break normal work patterns on the Sabbath, the Sabbath is not defined by a complete cessation of work. A close reading of all the relevant passages forces the conclusion that it has much more to do with the action, or work, of “blessing” and making it a holy day. This is further supported by religious traditions connecting the Sabbath to temple-building and the “divine sanctuary” (see ESV footnotes on Genesis 2:1-3). Moreover, the Sabbath rest, as explained at length in Hebrews 4, is intimately connected to belief (whose requirements are laid out in Romans 10:9-10), which is itself inseparable from a posture of worship (Colossians 3:16, Hebrews 12:28-29, etc.). Although Hebrews 4 is primarily about the eschatological kingdom of God, its use of Psalm 95 indicates that the psalm’s exhortation to enter God’s rest is both eschatological and imminent in meaning.
4 Cf. Psalm 8, Psalm 139, and Psalm 148
5 Of course, the truest longing of the soul is to know Jesus and live in relationship with God. However, Hebrews 4:6-11 makes clear that when we obey Jesus, we obtain this rest. Hebrews 4:1-2 explains that obedience is produced by faith in the gospel and Romans 10:9-13 explains that believing in Christ’s death and resurrection saves us and allows us to be blessed by God. Thus, true rest is one of the primary benefits of being a believer. Belief and rest are not separable, but are deeply connected goods that our hearts yearn for strongly.
Ben Kelley is a junior in Columbia College and the Editor-in-Chief of The Witness. His ideal Sunday afternoon is reading a history book in the sun with a cat in his lap.