God's Rest

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what rest means. Sunday’s sermon was all about rest—God’s rest. And the rest that God invites us to. We looked at Hebrews 4:1-11, and we talked about the many different layers of meaning to the word “rest” in this passage, but we didn’t have enough time to really do it justice. And it’s been bugging me since then—in part because even though I preached that sermon, I’m still just a bit unclear about what “rest” here really is.

We talked on Sunday about it being peace—the peace of God. The goodness of God. A sliver of the wholeness of the Garden of Eden or a foretaste of the glory of the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God. What’s still just a little confusing for me, however, is how it relates to work. There’s still work to be done in this world. There’s still work for God that we’re called to do in this world. God’s rest is not an invitation to kick up our heels and enjoy a glass of lemonade.

I caught a podcast of The Bible Project this morning. It was a follow-up to the series they did on the Son of Man title for Jesus. But I was surprised to hear a reference in it to God’s rest in Genesis 1 and 2. And they, too, noted that rest here is not an absence of work as much as it is a transforming of our understanding of work. One of the clearest expressions of God’s rest from Genesis 1 and 2 is the Garden of Eden—and this is not God taking a break from work as much as it is God being present in and through the world. And so when God invites us into God’s rest, it is an invitation into God’s presence—just as we had in the Garden of Eden.

I then went back and listened to the Bible Project’s podcast specifically on God’s Rest. Like Hebrews 4, it rooted the Sabbath rest of the Ten Commandments in the rest of God from Genesis 1 and 2. One of the pitfalls of working too much is that we quickly begin to think that our survival depends entirely on ourselves. We forget our dependence upon God, we forget that all that we have is a gift from God, we forget that God is ultimately providing for us. And so one day a week, a Sabbath rest, we are invited to step away from our work and enter a mini Garden of Eden. We are invited to remember that our lives don’t depend upon our own work. Our lives depend upon God.

This is helpful in projecting forward as well. We’re not looking back at a Garden of Eden as much as we are looking ahead to the New Jerusalem. A world where all the brokenness is healed. Where there is no more sorrow or suffering or pain. Where everything is in right relationship with everything else. I’d like to think that I’m striving for this world. That I’m doing my best to live into that reality right now. That I’m working to heal brokenness in this world. To lift up the oppressed. To give hope to the hopeless. But this is hard work. And it can be tiring. And it’s easy to think that we’re not making any difference. And, of course, it feels like I’m never doing enough.

But here, in part, is where God invites us into God’s rest. Not to stop working per se. But to do the work in a new freedom. To enter into the presence of God. To see God already at work in and through the world. To remember that even as God invites us to participate in this important work, its success does not depend upon us. It is God’s work. And God will get it done.