Rest Area Open

The highway sign read, “Rest Area Closed.” The State had torn down the old facility and was replacing it completely — building, utilities, and pavement. “That’s OK,” I thought, “there’s another one 35 miles up the road.” But as I approached, this second pull-off likewise greeted me with the familiar unwelcome sign, “Rest Area Closed.” It, too, was under complete reconstruction! Clearly, these master planners had failed to consider old men’s bladders, so without any place to stop, I became increasingly “restless,” until finding a third roadside facility another 40 minutes later. This one was open. And there I . . . er, rested.

God has a passion for our rest. We are most familiar with the seventh day Sabbath, when God calls us to rest from our functional toil, though we are tempted not to. God also offers respite from situational strife, though we can reject that, also. For instance, when God led the Hebrew people to the Promised Land — a place of protection and provision — they faithlessly refused to go in. Vowed God to them, “Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Calab. . . and Joshua.”¹ Centuries later, God recalled their refusal: “I was angry with that generation . . . So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”² Rest Area Closed.

Yet every day, God compassionately calls us to another kind of rest, a life-giving rest. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.”³ Here the author speaks not of “work” in the manual labor sense, rather, he calls us to rest from the pursuit of “works” as a means of earning eternal life. In Christ, God has done the work of salvation for us, as only He could, and He now rests from this work. We must not harden our hearts⁴ against Him by pursuing in our own effort the rest He provides through His grace; we rest from our works by resting in His.

Then do we pursue works at all? Yes, we are called to “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”⁵ We pursue them not as means of gaining rest with God, however, but as people who have found our rest in Christ. Rest Area Open.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” — Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

Father, our rest is in You, as is our strength. In your rest, may we pursue the works you have prepared for us today. In Christ we pray. Amen.

¹ Numbers 14:30 NIV
² Psalm 95:10-11 NIV
³ Hebrews 4:9-10 NIV
⁴ Hebrews 3:8
⁵ Ephesians 2:10 ESV