True rest for the weary

The Brick Bible, by Brendan Powell Smith, purports to tell the whole Bible story in Legos. This seems like a clever idea but it’s deeply subversive, and not only because Smith is a professing atheist with a declared interest in undermining faith. Even if he were a devout fundamentalist Baptist with a gift for tinkering, I wouldn’t recommend his book, solely for its depiction of God as a Lego guy in a white robe, with a white beard and angry eyebrows. For the first six days “God” conjures up pebbly water and blocky vegetation, building up to a big finish with a naked Lego Adam. And on the seventh day, angry eyebrows still intact, the Creator strings up a hammock between two of the trees He made, pours a tall glass of lemonade, and “rests.”

Silly as it is, this is something like our default idea of rest. Contemplating God on the seventh day calls up an image of Him sitting back, satisfied with His creation, rejoicing in the goodness of it all. Because we’re told that God ceased from His work, as we are supposed to do on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:11), we see rest as not just the absence of work but the absence of anything that might tax body, mind, or spirit—the equivalent of kicking back in a hammock with a tall one. Because “R&R” is a cliché, we confuse one with the other. But God’s rest is not relaxation.

What is it, then? In some ways, it’s a sacred place. The idea of a god at rest would not have been completely foreign to the ancient Near East at the time these words were written. Temples to Baal or Molech or Isis were built as dwelling places, where the god or goddess could stop in, take up residence, and “rest” while enjoying the worship of their people (even fall asleep, as Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal while they wore themselves out).

Because ‘R&R’ is a cliché, we confuse one with the other. But God’s rest is not relaxation.

And of course, it’s a time: the Sabbath, created as a day to be with God, talk to Him, listen to Him, and contemplate Him as He contemplates us. One day out of seven connects us with our eternal destiny: “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10). Ceasing from “works” on earth doesn’t mean we will not work in heaven. It does mean that the frustrations, the deadlines, the failures, the redos, the sheer temporality and apparent futility of our labor will be a thing of the past. Rather than working against, we’ll be working with our Lord, for His glory and our pleasure.

In the meantime, Jesus’ promise that “I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28-29) comes with a symbol of labor: “Take my yoke.” It’s not a yoke that he drives, but a yoke he bears, right alongside us.

As I write, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and neighboring states have taken to the seas and roads. They are escaping the crossfire between fanatics who would impose their own form of “rest”—an ironclad conformity that they claim is the only way to peace. Hungry, homeless, buffeted, terrified, these wanderers are, in the most literal sense, rest-less. We can pray that their forced exile will drive some of them into the arms of the only One who can calm their souls.

Still, “there remains a rest for the people of God,” and this one will be final. Jesus worked for it—during His whole life on earth, He worked to restore the ruin of the original creation (Mark 2:27)—but during one week, from Sunday to Sunday, He earned it. We misunderstand “the Sabbath was made for man” if we see it mostly as a provision for restoring our strength. It’s also for enjoying the relationship Jesus restored. Our earthly Sabbath, however we understand it, should be preparing us for that: not a duty but a place, not void of exertion, but full of God.

Email jcheaney@wng.org