Editor’s note: This SpeakOut was submitted by Charles M. Mohler of White.
A few days now bygone, a friend and colleague of mine, and I were solving the world’s problems in a parking lot — a parking lot! Many individuals inside their vehicles negotiated the obstacle without any difficulty. Then all of a sudden, an individual pulled up short, honked his horn, and waved obscene hand gestures. A deputy, one of the Brookings County finest, assured me that there is no emergency on this planet to justify such behavior. It served as a stark reminder of how often we forget to rest.
Over and over, rest is forgotten about. We fill our days with to-do lists accomplished one by one and activities until we run out of steam. If we really listened, paused, and considered our schedules, we’d hear God say, “It’s time to rest, child. Take time for Me.”
In the first chapters of Genesis, God forms all of creation and then He rests. He Sabbaths and calls us to do the same. Exodus even says that when He created time for rest, He “… made it holy.” (Exodus 20:11).
This Sabbath was created to provide margins in our life to refocus. We are called to work in worship of God and then rest through physical rest, recreational restoration, relational connections, and a time to realign our hearts with God’s.
But most often, we are moving too fast. We are speeding through the rest stops like Raully. Only when we are completely exhausted are we forced to stop and we ask ourselves, “What happened?”
Psalm 46:10 says to us, “Stop fighting,” he says, “and know that I am God…” Essentially, God is saying, “Stop what you are doing and remember me.”
Moments of rest are opportunities to learn, grow, and get direction on the next route in our lives.
God may be trying to get you to slow down or to stop right now so He can show you some things that you are never going to see if you are always going.
Take the rest stops in life, and take them faithfully.
Stopping to do something restful can feel like a sacrifice. Perhaps you do not get everything done that you wanted to achieve or felt that you needed to accomplish. But in these moments, you commune with God. And God says, “Well done, child.”
Rest stops fill you up so that you can live the life God called you to live in all of its fullness. They set you on the right path, energize you, and allow you to finish the race marked out for you and finish it strong. Consider how you might use the day to take a rest stop.
Do what fills you with energy, whether that be reading by yourself or having a conversation with a friend or family member.
QUESTION OF THE DAY
How can you faithfully build rest stops into your weekly routine?
“Prayer for Patience”
(With ecclesiastical approval)
O gracious St. Paul, who from a persecutor of Christianity, did become a most ardent apostle of zeal; and who to make known the Savior Jesus Christ unto the ends of the world did suffer with joy imprisonment, scourgings, stonings, shipwrecks and persecutions of every kind, and in the end did shed your blood to the last drop, obtain for us the grace to receive, as favors of the Divine mercy, infirmities, tribulations, and misfortunes of the present life, so that the vicissitudes of this our exile will not render us cold in the service of God, but will render us always more faithful and more fervent.
Amen.
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