Receiving the gift requires pressing in to go where you haven't believed it possible to go.

As a pianist learns to pause between musical phrases, you learn to reject the lie, "I'm way too busy to stop."

Deborah P. Brunt

 

Something startling came into focus for me well into adulthood. It's a concept as old as Adam - and one we civilized folk consider just as outdated.

 

In music, it's an interval of silence. In poetry, it's a short pause. In our society, it's something we avoid like the plague. Yet it carries a stunning capacity to refresh and heal.

 

In a word, it's rest.

 

Not that we're enamored with work. While a few true workaholics live, eat and breathe their jobs, the vast majority would tell you they'd love a shorter work week.

 

It just wouldn't do them any good. You see, work itself isn't the problem.

 

Throughout history, people have worked, often much harder than any of us. What's more, people in previous centuries had far fewer labor-saving devices. Yet, we're the ones living in a near-catatonic state brought on by utter exhaustion. We've lived in this state so long, we've almost convinced ourselves it's normal. But our bodies (and other parts of us not so easy to see) are screaming that it's not normal nor healthy at all.

 

Occasionally, we decide we've been working too hard - and determine to make some time for play. But because we've learned the fine art of turning play into work, we often jam-pack our vacation days. We gauge the success of our "time off" by how many places we visit, sights we see, activities we complete, things we do.

 

Even at their best, occasional vacations cannot begin to compensate for the constant mental and emotional overload under which most of us labor. We return to work still exhausted - running to catch up back on the job.

 

Thus, the weariness penetrates ever deeper, as we strive to keep up on a treadmill that spins ever faster. Though we blame work, we need it. Though playtime is vital too, we desperately need to learn how to do it.

 

Gripped by humanity's bent and society's values, we're afraid to see, much less embrace, the missing element that gives rhythm to work, refreshes us in play and transforms life from a treadmill into an adventure. We have such an aversion to this missing element that we've turned it into a punishment. We call the punishment, Time Out.

 

The God who created us and breathed life into us established Time Out as a blessing and a sign of right relationship with him. He named it Sabbath (see Ex. 31:13; Ezek. 20:12, 20; Isa. 56:2; 58:13). From the beginning, he designated significantly more time for work than for Sabbath rest. Ah, but he taught rest first.

Creating people on the sixth day, the Lord God gave the first man and woman a huge, seemingly impossible, assignment: "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth" (MSG).

Then, "On the seventh day, having finished his task, God rested from all his work" (Gen. 2:2 NLT).  "On the seventh day he rested and was refreshed" (Ex. 31:17). Literally, he stopped and breathed. With the man and the woman watching, God inaugurated and modeled Time Out.

You think you have way too much to do to take time out? Adam and Eve had an entire world to subdue. The God who gave them the assignment knew it would seem they'd have to work till they dropped, to make any progress at all. So, from the start, he showed them the rhythm they would need to establish in order to do the task, a rhythm of work punctuated by pauses to stop and breathe. He created Adam and Eve one day, taught them rest the next day - and then set them to work.

Centuries later, when God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, he led them to Mt. Sinai and gave them the Ten Words. Time and again, he made clear that his ten commandments weren't legalistic rules. Rather, "they are your life. By them you will live long in the land ..." (Deut. 32:47).

Among the ten things God declared most important to him and most crucial for life, was this: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" (Ex. 20:8). The Lord said, "remember," knowing how prone we are to devalue, ignore and forget rest.

When you hear the words Sabbath and holy, what mental images come to mind? When you think about "keeping Sabbath," how do you picture it? If your images of Sabbath are drab, rule-driven, dutiful - anything but delightful - would you please lay them aside? Would you give God permission to paint a picture new to you, a picture of Sabbath rest as he envisions it for you? True Sabbath always honors the one true God - and it doesn't look at all as most of us have thought.

When God spoke the Ten Words, he gave one command as to how to keep the Sabbath day: "On it you shall not do any work" (Ex. 20:10). He said, in essence, "Really rest." By learning what God meant and doing it, the Israelites would honor their Lord. Also, as they engaged in meaningful work, intersected by real rest, they would experience blessing and life.

Lest we think Time Out strictly an Old Testament proposition, Hebrews 4:9 says, "There still remains for God's people a rest like God's resting on the seventh day" (GNT).

When God says something once, it's important. When he says something three times in a row, he's highlighting, underlining and urging us to listen. Hebrews 3-4 reminds us three times in 20 verses that the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Heb. 3:7, 15; 4:7).

The inspired writer of Psalm 95 said it first: "He is our God ... Today, if only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (vv. 7-8).

Several thousand years later, we're still reading: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."

But what does God the Spirit keep urging us to hear? What does he keep warning us not to harden our hearts about? The surprising answer is rest. Ten times, Hebrews 3-4 mentions "rest." Again and again, the inspired writer urges us not to do what the wilderness generation of Israelites did, not to forfeit rest.

Leaving Egypt, the Israelites resisted resting at the times their Lord designated as Sabbath. Further, they failed even to realize: Sabbath is also a place. At Sinai, the Lord referred to both aspects of Sabbath - the land he was giving his people and the Time Out with him wherever he led - when he promised, "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest" (Ex. 33:14).

Camped just outside the promised resting place, the Exodus generation decided they didn't have the wherewithal to take the land. Hardening their hearts, they did not enter their rest.

Hebrews 3:19 says, "So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief." As a result of refusing rest, they spent the remainder of their lives wandering aimlessly, bickering angrily, dying slowly. Like a person on an endless treadmill, they took a lot of steps - and went nowhere.

Equally tragic, later generations of Israelites hardened their hearts in a similar way. Hundreds of years after Moses' death, Isaiah cried:

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it" (Isa. 30:15).

In yet another generation, the prophet Jeremiah declared:

This is what the Lord says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, 'We will not walk in it'" (Jer. 6:16).

Again and again, God's people hardened their hearts and rejected rest. No wonder the writer of Hebrews warns us so strongly against doing the same thing. No wonder Hebrews 4:11 urges:

Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience (Heb. 4:11).

Whatever you may believe about when or how to observe Sabbath, it's hard to dismiss the compelling testimony of Scripture: God calls his people in every generation to "make every effort to enter" a Sabbath-like rest.

It's hard to dismiss the compelling testimony within us: Nonstop busyness kills. It reduces our minds to mush. It opens our bodies to disease. It replaces vitality with stupor and a crazed, mechanical running to keep up.

Our Lord has designed rest both as a place we enter and a pause we regularly take. The journey into rest is profoundly simple - and extraordinarily hard. For starters, it requires learning the lesson of the seventh day of Creation. It requires remembering: God created Time Out to be a delight, not the punishment we have thought.

Rest encompasses what refreshes, spirit, soul and body. It includes the kind of stillness that emanates from the peace of God within. At the same time, it includes movement - an extravagant assortment of breath-filled acts that delight God and truly rejuvenate us, but that we may not have associated with Sabbath at all. 

So remember, and realize: You don't have to lie around like a zombie to rest. You don't have to sit on a sanctuary pew to keep Sabbath. Time Out may certainly involve sleep. Indeed, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to sleep. Time Out may also involve quiet contemplation or worshiping with others. But don't limit your infinitely creative God, or yourself, to those few options. Rather, stop to breathe - and let your Lord teach you how it's done.

That sounds easy enough. But it's not. Entering rest requires pressing in to go where you haven't believed it possible to go. As a pianist learns to pause between musical phrases, you learn to reject the lie, "I just can't stop." Intentionally, regularly, you punctuate periods of purposeful labor with a short pause, an interval of silence, a real rest. As the Joshua generation entered the land their parents had refused and warred for the ground God had given, you learn to rest in God's presence even as you carry out huge assignments that require courage, strategy, struggle and strength.

You can't do the latter - you can't rest in your Lord in the thick of life's battles - without doing the former. Time Out is crucial for health, for stamina, for sanity and clarity, for overcoming setbacks, for relating deeply and well and for fully living life.

For us who believe in the Creator God of the Bible, Time Out is crucial for another reason. It declares to a frantic, exhausted world that the Lord we serve is a God of love, who has our best interests at heart. It attests to our confidence that his ways are truly the ways of life. It says, far more loudly than words, that we "adhere to and trust in and rely on God" (Heb. 3:19 AMP).

Recognizing our human frailty and limitations, we know the tasks God has given us are way too big for us. Renouncing self-effort, we trust the Lord to work through us. Tuning out the clamorous, nonstop demands of urgency, we hear God's voice when he says to pause. Taking Time Out, we announce: We trust our God to accomplish in our behalf while we relax in him.

Trouble is, we aren't making this announcement. While Starbucks leads the way in inviting people to pause, we avid church-goers simply cannot find the time to visit with a friend, take a leisurely walk or sit with no agenda except to reflect on our God. Most of us have no interval of silence, even in our worship services. We would feel deeply guilty - and hopelessly unable - to take several hours on a regular basis to stop.

Yet, here's the thing about a treadmill: You can step off of it. In fact, eventually, you must or, unable to go another step, you'll be hurled off.

Most of my adulthood, I ran on the treadmill, dutifully, wearily, more and more raggedly. In 1998, I accepted a ministry position that turned the speed setting way, way up. Seven years later, I stepped off, so depleted that I spent the next seven days in bed. In the months that followed, I echoed the confession of the singer in Psalm 116, who wrote: "Then I called on the name of the Lord: 'Lord, save me!'" (v. 4).

I echoed the singer's testimony: "The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the unwary; when I was brought low, he saved me" (vv. 5-6).

I echoed the singer's admonition: "Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you" (v. 7).

Now, I've learned: Returning to your rest is a process. It takes time to see the internal agreements that keep you bound to busyness, and more time to break free from them. It takes time to recognize healthy rhythms, and more time to establish them.

You may feel tired just thinking about it. If you're already exhausted, the effort it takes to enter rest may seem utterly out of reach. Remember: Entering rest seemed utterly out of reach to the Israelites too. It seemed so because of their unbelief.

I didn't return to my rest by contemplating the enormity of the process. Rather, in desperation, I cried out to my Lord. Falling, exhausted, into his arms, I realized anew how good he is. I took the next step, and then the next, as he has taught me to live according to his unforced rhythms. Along the way, I saw how very "unwary" I had been.

Unwary. The Hebrew word so rendered in Psalm 116:6 means "na�ve, foolish,

The One who created us exposes the lies we've naively believed. The One who gave his life to redeem us shows us how futile and suicidal it is to run, ever more frantically, on a treadmill that never stops.

As we respond in faith, trusting him to deliver before we see any hint of a way out, he reveals the way of escape he himself has made. As we set our heart to follow, relying on his grace and power, he teaches us the rhythm he established for us from the foundation of the earth, a rhythm that includes, as a priceless gift, Time Out. 

. . . . . . . 

*OT:6612. Pethiy - Brown Driver & Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, � 1993 Woodside Bible Fellowship, Ontario, Canada, licensed from the Institute for Creation Research; Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, � 1980 The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.

Unless otherwise noted, all other Scriptures quoted are from the Holy Bible, New International Version�. NIV�. Copyright � 1973, 1978, 1984, 2001 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved. Also quoted: The Amplified Bible (AMP), Good News Translation (GNT), The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (MSG) and New Living Translation (NLT).   

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