Rest Is Our Prep, Not Our Prize: by Brianna Pope
Being a Fellow also means being busy. We have packed schedules with little time to stop and take a breath. It becomes a balancing act to complete our work and also find time to rest and recharge. I’m the kind of person who loves to be busy - I like having my planner filled with events, dinner plans, and deadlines. I love the pressure of deadlines, coordinating schedules, and running from place to place because of how productive it makes me feel. However, while I love being booked and busy, I find that after a while it leaves me feeling very drained, moody, and distracted from the Lord. My vision becomes centered on my next project, how I can be better at my job, or what restaurant I want to go to next with my friends. I leave very little room for physical rest, let alone spiritual rest. I fall into a rut of becoming sluggish and exhausted and lose my focus on the bigger plan that God has in store, and instead remain consumed by the nitty gritty of my detailed day.
In the last couple weeks, I have been working at full capacity. A lot of changes are happening at my workplace, and I find myself being asked to step into more roles and take on more responsibility. Being the Enneagram type 3 that I am, I generally thrive in this environment and love being seen as able to take on more responsibility - but sometimes I find myself in a sea of work with very little light at the end of the tunnel. In the span of two weeks I suddenly found myself balancing four big projects at work that included planning events, finalizing paperwork, running meetings, and meeting with new potential clients, while also balancing ministry related responsibilities such as going to church and youth group on Wednesday nights. Add in the responsibility of loving my friends well, as they asked for my attention and time in the midst of their personal trials. I’ve gone in early and stayed late to meet deadlines and perfect every project at work. I’ve gotten home only to find myself tweeking details of different work projects and even occasionally dreaming about work. My focus has become work and I find myself so tired. I love my job and I love working, but sometimes I will put it before the Lord and find my satisfaction in accomplishing different goals or being told I’m really good at my job. While I am achieving a lot at work, I seem to be lacking in others, including my spiritual life and my physical well-being. I wasn’t taking time to let my body rest so that it could recover from daily activities. I usually have quiet time in the morning before work, but I found that the past two weeks, I’ve been hitting the snooze button a lot more often to get an extra hour of sleep. I’ve put God on the back-burner and it was showing up in my life. I was exhausted and my friends could tell. I would get text messages throughout my day asking how I was doing because they could tell I wasn’t myself. The issue being, I’m tired and had left myself no room for rest.
While I work on all cylinders, I don’t usually notice my need for rest until I hit a wall, whether that wall be my physical body feeling sick or that I just feel inadequate emotionally no matter how many projects I finish or how many “good job!”s I receive. I didn’t want to keep living in this world where I run myself down to my breaking point and then turn to God when I was desperate for my cup to be filled. I needed boundaries, I needed balance, and most importantly, I needed rest. I started to really examine the spiritual practice of keeping the Sabbath. Why does God declare it so important that his followers rest? I listened to podcasts, read my bible, read commentary, asked questions and just prayed to help me understand this balance that I so desperately needed - and God came through!
The Sabbath was intended as a day of rest for God’s people after a week of work. God never designed us to be solely work horses and continuously go; we are meant to stop and rest. But stopping the day-to-day task mentality can be hard and sometimes we just don’t want to. We would rather continue to work and get ahead or to calm the worry instead of falling behind because these things give us some sense of control in this chaotic world. My friend from home likes to say that if we are being obedient to the Lord, then whatever we show up with will be enough to complete His will. This doesn’t always work for everyone, it’s hard to give up control or to surrender your plan for the Lord’s. It’s easy to create a quick back up plan just in case the Lord’s plan doesn’t line up with what I thought I would be doing. But the reality is that God’s plan is ultimately the best option for us whether we understand it right now or not. The Lord’s way is what will help sanctify and grow us. I was listening to a sermon that said the Sabbath is an act of worship because we are taking a day to stop in our tracks and resist the temptation to get ahead and this is where we can put our trust in the Lord. Another thought is that keeping the Sabbath is not for God’s wellbeing but for our own. The Lord designed us to need rest and if we don’t take that responsibility the only one who suffers is ourselves, not God. The Lord wants to give us rest, which we can see in Psalm 3:5: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.” Even when we have a million things to do or when we are against a heavy trial, the Lord still calls us to stop and rest because in the rest he gives. We are then sustained to take on the daily trials of this life.
The Sabbath is meant for rest, but what does rest really mean? Could we just lay in bed all day eating TruFru while watching Wanda Vision ;)? No, actually, that’s not the kind of rest God calls us to, at least from what I found. God still requires us to be present, meaning being present with him. I listened to a sermon that mentioned that the Sabbath should be filled with activities that stir your affections for the Lord. This isn’t a one size fits all instruction because while I might want to hammock by the lake and read a book or go on a walk in nature, you could see that as homework and want to do something more like playing golf or meeting up with friends for coffee and bible study. The point is to engage in a day that is focused on being present with the Lord. Navigating through a world where it’s normal to be overworked, stressed out, and pushed to edge is difficult, but it’s when we put that all aside and look to God we will find our rest and be sustained.
