“Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” Genesis 2:3 NIV
How often do we actually rest from our work? God made the world in 6 days and then He rested from His work. From the very beginning, God gave us a pattern to follow – work, then rest. I feel that in our culture this is a pattern that is very hard to follow. We are on the go most of the time and can obtain things we want at all hours of the day. For example, if we can’t physically get to a store, we are able to order what we need online.
Resting in our culture can sometimes be viewed as being selfish or lazy on the part of the person who is resting. This is unfortunate because God designed us to have the component of rest as part of our routine. If we didn’t need to rest, we wouldn’t sleep, but we very clearly need to sleep to recharge our bodies.
I am willing to admit that I struggle with the concept of rest. There are times when I feel like I have too much to get done and there is no time to rest and then there are other times when I feel like rest would be a good idea, but I can’t get my mind to settle down so my body can actually rest. I feel like God has been confronting me with this idea of rest more lately than in the past, so I am trying to practice resting for portions of my day. I don’t mean taking naps, but truly simply stopping what I am doing and either enjoying being still or talking with God. I am hoping to increase that time so that I can have a day a week where I am not working on something all the time. I want to use the time that I am resting to communicate with God more than I do now.
Do you struggle with resting?
I like it