Bits for Sunday, October 6, 2008

Rest.

That beautiful word that escapes us entirely too much of the time.

I don’t know if you’re like me – but I have been known to specifically schedule my times of rest because if I don’t – I’ll be too busy to have them. And yet it’s very hard to suddenly shut down my brain and rest on command. I find myself thinking of all the things I could – should – be doing while I’m “wasting time” resting.

Yesterday, with the exception of exercising, I took all my mentally scheduled plans and tossed them out the window. That took an act of discipline in and of itself. I do not easily toss the day’s script.

I slept in – but not until all hours of the day like I’m sometimes known to do. I made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast (which really did kind of slam into the lunch hour) and kicked back to watch some HGTV while I enjoyed a perfect leisurely morning. I spent the rest of the day mixing some fun with some actual responsibility and amazingly enough, when the end of the day arrived, I wasn’t even kicking myself for all the things I never did because I ditched “the plan.”

Halfway through the day, my phone rang, and on the other end was a friend I’ve not seen in four years. She was in town and wondered if we could catch up for a few minutes. She had things scheduled but finally, late in the evening, she called and said she was free. I grabbed Starbucks for us and headed to meet her for a couple hours of catching up on four years of news. And as I drove home much later, I realized that sort of thing is what the day is really about. The cleaning will still be there tomorrow, but the time with her was then or…maybe not for another four years.

Even though I stayed out way too late on a church night, it was still restful. It was still good. And hey – Sunday afternoons were made for naps, so any lack of sleep could be easily fixed.

In Bible study last week, a little group of us sat around and discussed that mysterious period of Jesus’ life that is not really mentioned. Those twenty-eight or so years that fall between the time the wise men visited and public ministry began. With the exception of that one moment when He was twelve and informing Mary and Joseph that He must be about his Father’s business, there are no clues about what happened in His life.

We speculated about this and that, and I said that I think those years were filled to the brim with life. I think for Jesus to be able to relate to people the way He needed to relate to them during His years of ministry, He had to do a lot of hands-on, in-the-field prep work. I believe those silent years were an entire lifetime of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, test and trials, all crammed into twenty-some odd years.

Talk about an agenda! Lots to do…and yet not a lot of time to do it. And yet the Bible is very clear that Jesus understood the importance of rest and He took time out to do it. And I would imagine there were days when the check-list had to be tossed aside because a friend was in town – or something else that seemed lesser might actually have been greater.

Agendas are good. Checklists…and more specifically the checking off of checklists…are good. But rest is good too. And this week I intend to pack in my fair share of it.