From Phony Rest to Sincere Repose
By Andrew Goins
Watauga County
“And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day” ~ Luke 4:16
The house I grew up in had a wood stove and a fireplace; they were our primary heat source for the winters. Ever since I was six years old, my dad would take me and my brothers into the woods to hunt for our woodstove’s food. One fall my Dad interrupted the yearly wood hunting ritual by buying 4 cords of uncut wood that was dumped into our yard. Typically, we would use a go-devil and some muscle to cut the wood but this year my Dad rented a wood splitter for three days. We got to work as soon as the wood was dumped into our yard. We cut up the log, rolled it to the wood splitter, split it, and chucked the cut wood into a pile that was slowly being moved by a wheelbarrow to be stacked.
After the sun died and the darkness gave birth to the stars, I went to bed to the sound of a roaring wood splitter chomping down the wood with its single tooth and gas-powered jaws. I woke up at 2 am and looked outside to see my dad’s headlamp illuminating forearms, calloused hands, and splintering wood. He was racing to cut as much wood as possible before the three days of renting the wood splitter were complete. I felt guilty. My guilt made my rest restless and rigid.
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My dad has always had an energetic work ethic. Even still, his work ethic has matured with him over the years. His work ethic has matured only because his ability to rest has matured. These days, my dad (after worshiping with God’s people on Sunday morning) takes a pipe and poetry and retreats to the woods to rest with the Lord. My dad’s work ethic has been strengthened by his willingness to sabbath. You–like my dad–cannot learn how to rest until you learn how to work. At the same time, you cannot learn how to work until you learn how to rest. Rest and work belong together; they mature together. Rest is the compost that nourishes work so that work remains rooted in gratitude. Work is a word of release for a phony and rigid rest so that it becomes a released rest—a true rest.
If you want to learn how to rest, sabbath is a good place to start. In the bible, the sabbath is a day when the people of God are re-oriented by doing two things: resting and remembering.
The Israelites rested to get in touch with their creatureliness. By knowing their creatureliness, they could know God’s cosmic capacity by observing God’s work in the world: the thirsty fawn fumbling towards the creek, the blond grainfields ripening for harvest, the fruits fattening on the trees, the flowers quiet, booming bloom coloring the earth—all by the Lord’s power and providence.
The Israelites sabbath also helped them to remember God’s salvation history: God’s breath splitting the red seas like a wood splitter, God making rocks into springs, God making manna rain from the skies, God giving Israel the Torah so that God could bless all the nations through one nation—Israel.
Israel remembered God’s saving acts to look back and know who God is–merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love–so that they could look ahead in hope, knowing that God is faithful to fulfill what he promises.
Sabbath grounds us in the reality of our own creatureliness and orients us to the reality of the Creator’s providence. This is good news because it means that God is responsible for providing, God is responsible for saving, God is responsible for re-creating, God is responsible for making the world go round. I am not saying that you are passive in these things, but I am saying God promises to clothe you as he clothes the lilies and feed you as he feeds the birds.
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Our culture has taught us to be guilt-filled resters and comparison-driven workers. Our rest is charged with guilt, like a boy gazing out the window watching his dad work at 2 am. Our culture has taught us to distract ourselves from our guilt by binge-watching Netflix, watching sports, working out, and cleaning.
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In a culture that applauds workaholism in the name of work ethic, we need to recover the practice of the sabbath. We need to learn how to rest and observe God’s work in the world; we need to remember God’s work in the past so that we can learn how to trust God with our future.
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Andrew Goins is on staff for a campus ministry at Appalachian State University called Ratio Christi. He also works as a youth leader and worship leader at Arbor Dale Presbyterian Church in Banner Elk.
Andrew is committed to simply and thoroughly loving his wife Bethany, growing in his bible nerdiness, delighting in good books (theology, poetry, and select fiction), music, photography, creation, and in gathering people together for bible studies, a shared meal, or making music.
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