REST: The very word paints pictures of long nights in a soft bed, gently hovering on the edge of consciousness before finally surrendering to a time of soul-resuscitating sleep. Or of reclining on a blanket at the seashore, watching the seagulls silhouetting against the sky, arching in their graceful flight or delighting in them as they walk along the shore, making little bird foot-prints in the wet sand, while both watching and hearing the waves crash against the shore before melting back into the deep waters.
REST: It's what we seek, when, at the end of a tiring day we long to put our feet up, kick back and relax; we seek to rest both our wearied minds and our bodies. Long, hot bubble baths, scented candles, a favorite book and large fluffy towels can speak more to an exhausted woman than an expensive gift when she is worn out from her labors. How many of us have longed to hear those (sometimes elusive) words from our husbands, "Honey, I'll put the children to bed tonight. You go relax in a hot bath. You deserve it." Oh, honey! That kind of man you could love forever, cooking for him every morning and every night until Jesus comes because he knows how to let you rest.
Rest is elusive today. We run to and fro, doing more than we should have to do. Engaging in a crazy dance called modern life, we live life to the "fullest" but we never rest. There's no time to ever catch up on our sleep. There's no time to accomplish our never-ending "to do" list. There is no time to listen to the delicious laughter of our little children. There's no time for an escape to the seashore or even for a long hot bath with nice fluffy towels and scented candles. We're too busy. Trying to be everything to everybody, women today have lost sight of what is really important. We run around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off trying to make some sense of the dizzying dance. We have obligations to everyone it seems. We are sleep deprived, rest deprived, empty and deflated. When do you rest? More importantly, what kind of rest do you really need? What will stop the dizzying dance, the swirl of life, endured but not lived?
The answer doesn't lie in a different job, a different town or even in a different husband as many today think. It doesn't lie in more money, a bigger house or a better car or wardrobe, as nice as those are. There is only one real answer: His name is Jesus. He's the Truth shining through the darkness of our troubled, dizzying lives. He's the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, the balm to every pain. He's the REST that we really need.
To be able to partake of the rest that Jesus offers, we have to understand what He offers. He presents life "backwards" from what we have come to understand as the norm. For instance, Jesus says that if we want to be great then we must be a servant and if we want to live we must die. Only when we are willing to live life by His rules and not ours will our lives ever truly work the way that they were meant to. Only by studying His Word and letting Him become our ONLY thing instead of adding Him to a list of things we want will we ever be satisfied in Him and thus find rest.
When we learn to love Him instead of all and He is truly the only thing that we need to make us content and happy, when we become more like Him and learn to serve unselfishly and do without so that others may have, will the mad rush of life make sense as we find peace in Him, even in the midst of storms. If we do so then our lives will cease their dizzying dance. If we don't, we'll continue on the crazy, out-of-control carousel ride that we have been on for so long, always moving, always spinning, but making no real progress at all.
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