- Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. -
Rest is a funny idea, hard to tie down.
It’s a common problem we experience in language: the inability to accurately explain the emotion we are experiencing when our most used words fail to do so completely.
They require additional modifiers, such as an accompanying definition, tone, or look.
One of my ESL (English as a Second Language) friends explained this to me one day. He told me a story about a girlfriend who had asked him to say he loved her in French.
He flat out refused.
Why? According to him, the English word “love” doesn’t really mean anything. We’ve over-saturated it with a host of meanings.
We love our cats, the color of the sky today, when people receive due justice, attractive members of the opposite sex, and some people enough to die for them.
That word is doing a lot of work. Needless to say, by his opinion the French equivalent isn’t that diluted.
Well, so is rest. It means rest in the sense of not doing anything, but it also has a spiritual sense to it as well.
You can see this in the following questions. How do you rest? Where did they lay him to rest?
What’s the difference? One is of this world and one is of the next. One is a break from our labor, and one is a permanent separation.
The man who cannot enjoy his riches? Right, he has no earthly rest. He is constantly feeling his oppression in various forms, never truly able to be at peace.
That is the goal of the Sabbath. It’s the idea that we should lay down our work for a period. Why?
You’re to have faith in God that your constant labor doesn’t solve everything. That in order to live for your created purpose, you need to focus on the divine.
It’s that perspective that truly matters. Rest is a rightful attention on God and His purposes. That requires discipline. What kind?
The kind that can accept letting go. The kind that agrees to humility, that the world is too big for two human hands to conquer everything.
The stillborn never experiences this rest, because they do not enter the world. They do not know work like we do, even the work of breathing their own air.
So what rest do they find? Unending, idyllic peace. They find the rest of Eden, far beyond our wildest imaginations.
It is the cessation of the Fall. The experience of bliss on the other side in the Heavenly places.
Does it happen right when they leave? Does it happen at a future date? Does Jesus send you a picture and a note in the mail saying how much they miss you?
No. It’s an obscure peace to us below.
The rich man who lives an improper life does not know this final peace. He never trusted in God’s peace on earth, why would He be considered worthy for the eternal one?
That is then the answer for us. Stop striving. Pray and trust.
Do I mean to stop trying? Of course not. The Sabbath is only for a day.
It is to align our thoughts and actions in a fallen world. It is to remember all the things we stand upon that we take for granted.
The Sabbath is preparation for the Fall. The Sabbath is remembrance of Future Revivification.
Give not your rest to lesser idols.
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