Note: I actually wrote this blog entry a couple weeks ago, before the world changed in many ways, but never had a chance to post it until now. I’d probably change a few things if I were writing it now, but I think the main ideas behind it are still timely – a reminder to rest and trust.
Remember the manna God gave the Israelites when they were in the desert? Let me give a little background for those of you who didn’t get to watch Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments every Easter as a kid. In the book of Exodus, the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt through a series of miraculous events. It was pretty intense (so were the special effects in the movie). 😊 The next part of the plan was for God to lead them to the Promised Land and they would settle there. They eventually made it, but some big mistakes and a lack of trust in God extended their journey. So they wandered around in the desert for quite a long time – 40 years to be exact – as God taught them to trust Him in very tangible ways.
During that time in the desert, the Israelites obviously needed food to eat. Therefore, God sent them manna every morning and quail every evening. As someone who is slightly terrified of large groups of birds, the quail thing kind of freaks me out. However, the manna was really cool – it was a small, flaky type of bread/grain they had never even heard of before. I like to imagine it was kind of like puff pastry, though I’ll admit that’s probably not accurate. The most unique thing about this bread is that it came with a promise – it would show up every morning, and there would be enough for every single person among them. Each Israelite was tasked with gathering enough manna for themselves each day. God told them not to save any for the following day – He promised He would provide it, and He did. Of course, there were those who tested that promise, and they had some maggoty bread (and an annoyed Moses) the next day. The exception to this was on the Sabbath. God told the Israelites that they were to gather twice as much on the sixth day (Friday to those of us who like to give names to our days of the week), and that particular manna would not get moldy or maggoty. You see, God had commanded the Israelites to honor the Sabbath (the seventh day – or Saturday) as a day of rest. Therefore, He didn’t want them out on the Sabbath gathering food – instead He gave it to them early so they could use that day of rest for what it was designed for.
I share this story because it illustrates the idea that I mentioned in my last blog post: REST = TRUST. And for the Israelites, this trust was not required just once a week – it was required every day. Each day they could have gone out and gathered enough food to last them several days. But they quickly learned that the extra work would be in vain – it would all be worthless the next day. They had to go to sleep each night with complete trust that God would provide what they needed the next day. And on Friday night they had to go to sleep knowing manna would not appear the next day, and trusting that what they had gathered that day would get them through until Sunday.
And that’s exactly what happened. Every single day, for 40 years, God provided the Israelites with what they needed. He spent 40 years proving to them over and over again that He had taken them on this journey, and that He would provide for them every step of the way if they would simply rest and trust in Him.
This is where I am now. I have never truly been without any physical thing I’ve needed. I’ve never known hunger or thirst or a lack of basic needs. In fact, I think our family could survive an apocalypse for quite a while just on the excessive amount of peanut butter and cereal that is stocked in our pantry. And yet, I still struggle to rest in God’s provision for me. In this season, however, He is completely reshaping me into a creature who trusts Him implicitly.
During the past couple of years, I’ve learned more about rest than anything else. In our culture, Sundays are often considered to be “The Sabbath,” so when I was a kid Sundays meant going to church and making sure that work and sports activities didn’t take the place of Sunday morning worship. As an adult, it meant making sure we took one day a week to rest our bodies and minds and enjoy time as a family. And although all those things are good and important, I’ve learned that the Sabbath means so much more than that.
I’ve learned that honoring the Sabbath is an everyday act of trust.
An Everyday Sabbath means taking time every day to rest in the simple fact that God has provided for me. It is continual moments throughout the day of resting in God’s provision. And not just His provision of my material needs, but the provision of a Savior. I no longer have to work for my salvation – Christ already did that work on the Cross. I don’t have to strive to be good enough – HE is good enough. I don’t have to be strong and stable – HE is strong and stable. Jesus is the PROVIDER of ultimate rest – because He has done the work I could never do myself. I have nothing to earn, nothing to prove. I can rest in the work He has already done in my life.
So when I feel overwhelmed and burdened by the tasks and the worries of the world – that is a moment for an Everyday Sabbath. When I feel frantic and stressed, I can trust that He is bigger than the task at hand. When I feel hopeless, exhausted, broken, guilty – and the feelings of self-hatred and failure overwhelm me – I can TRUST that God has already paid the price for my sin and my failures, and that I can simply rest in His grace. There is no more striving – He has already paid every price required for my peace.
And just like God used something very practical and simple to teach the Israelites how to rest and trust Him, He has used very practical ways to teach me the same thing.
As the summer of 2018 headed into fall, it became increasingly clear that not only was my depression getting worse, anxiety had also joined forces with it to make an especially fun cocktail of mental illness. Work had clearly become a strong trigger of this anxiety, simply because I was trying to do far more than I should have in my limited work hours. I was working at a frantic, very stressful pace, and it could no longer be maintained. I requested and was granted a leave-of-absence and a few months of reduced hours, which I was incredibly thankful for. However, it quickly became obvious to me that I simply needed to resign. It was no longer a career that I could do part-time – my work habits were not healthy and the position was too large in scope for me to handle. I thought I would get another, more simple job fairly quickly – after all, I hear that money is important when you need to pay your bills.
Instead, God called me to a season of rest. Through prayer and Him providing in other ways that we didn’t anticipate, He made it clear that it was all right for me to take some time to heal and relearn healthy work habits – and healthy rest habits. Yes, I was still raising my kids and volunteering in small ways, but I spent a large part of my time just recovering from the abuse I’d put my mind and body through for years.
I took A LOT of naps, and went on a lot of walks with friends. I baked. I cleaned. I napped again. I met with friends and mentors. I read Scripture and listened to worship music. And napped some more. Ate some puppy chow and some cheesecake. We bought a pop-up camper and went to Yellowstone. I read a lot of fiction books and very few self-help books. I ate breakfast and lunch at normal times. I learned about listening prayer. I took my kids to the pool. I worked in my garden. I was available to help my friend with her baby. I rarely rushed. I yelled a lot less. I was a lot more fun.
Oh, I still had rough days and weeks. At Thanksgiving, I pretty much hid out most of the time because my anxiety was so strong when I was around people – even the people I loved the most in the world. At Christmas we skipped a family gathering that I would have never missed before. When summer came and my kids didn’t have school, it was overwhelming to have to share my space and time with them all day. I still had down moments, days, and weeks. But I had stopped striving, and was learning how to rest in the fact that Jesus had already provided for me.
In those ten months where I did not work an official job, I learned the art of the Everyday Sabbath. I learned that when I’m resting, I am trusting. When working on tasks, my previous habit had always been work before play. I never stopped a task part-way through to even do something simple like eat lunch. I always viewed rest as the reward for my work – not a gift God had given me freely. But in an Everyday Sabbath moment, I learned to slow my frantic “get-it-done” mindset, remind myself that Jesus never rushed, and remember that a task doesn’t have to be completed for me to take a few moments to rest and enjoy the gift of life given to me. I would trust that a task could be done without me, or could be set down and picked up again without the world falling apart. My life began to revolve a lot more around the people I loved than the to-do list and the calendar.
When I began working a new job last September (one with a lot less stress), I was very deliberate about how I structured my day. I called it my Mr. Rogers schedule. You know how he always did the same things in the same pattern every day? That’s what I have to do right now to maintain the lessons I’ve learned – or I know I will quickly slip back into my old habits. So now I work a few hours in the morning, come home and eat lunch, not allowing myself to do any kind of work at home – just rest. Then I go back to work for a few more hours. I’ve found that when I’ve skipped that hour at home for some reason or another, my stress level shoots up to dangerous levels again, and I feel anxiety start to overwhelm me again.
An Everyday Sabbath moment is any moment when you stop your frantic pace and remind yourself that Jesus is enough. It’s any time you slow down enough to enjoy a worship song or watch the clouds. The Sabbath is about rest and trust – it is a gift freely given, not a reward that is earned. It’s about surrendering your plans and your tasks to Him – acknowledging that He has already paid any price required for what you need. An Everyday Sabbath is choosing Him over something else. It is rest in its simplest, most peaceful form.
One of my favorite scriptures from this time is Psalm 131:
“My heart is not proud, O Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.”
A weaned child is no longer simply seeking sustenance and basic needs from his mother. The mother has proven that she will provide what he needs – over and over again. Therefore, all he desires now is to rest quietly, enjoying the peace of being with the one who gave him life. He is not proud or expectant – just simply resting and trusting that she will protect and provide for him in every way.
In the same way, may we rest in our Savior – not frantically striving to fulfill our needs or worrying about what comes next. Instead, may we rest in the promises that He has already fulfilled and the faithfulness He has already shown. May we enjoy the peace that He gives us when we truly rest and trust in Him.
Note: I definitely want to credit Dr. Greg Delort with helping me understand this idea of the Everyday Sabbath. Through a conversation with him and one of his sermons, he helped me to see how skewed my idea of rest truly was, and how the Sabbath is meant to be celebrated every day.
Feeble Hands 