rest: faith vs. frenzy

Several years ago, I spent a week of my Christmas vacation with my Aunt Elaine. The stated reason for this visit was that I was going to work on a publication for my uncle’s door factory. Looking back now, though, I think probably that was her way of loving me, assigning me a task and spending time with me working on it: it was just me and her for most of the week.

The technical snags in the project came quickly and with force. My laptop flipped. The ZIP drive wasn’t working right. The program I was using was not compatible with the printer. In fact, it seemed nothing was compatible with anything. As the hours and days went on, it was one frustration after another. And I was completely frazzled.

Part way through the week, after a morning bonding with IBM tech support, I was waiting to something to start working right. I was stressed out; my wheels were spinning. I was a ball of frantic energy. My aunt could not have been more calm and peaceful.

I remember sitting there in the lunchroom where I was working, when she came in to see how I was doing. I told her things weren’t getting anywhere. And she wondered aloud to me, if perhaps this little project wasn’t necessary, that maybe God had other plans for the week, that maybe we didn’t need to be trying so hard, stressing out and forcing it to happen. Then she prayed with me about it.

I wish I could remember exactly what she said, her exact perspective that so dramatically both comforted and confronted me, but I only remember what it felt like: it was like blindly stumbling around frantically in a hurricane and then instantly walking through a door to a quiet, warm and cozy room with an overstuffed chair and a good book sitting next to it. And realizing that the quiet room was reality and the hurricane was my own creation.

I am learning to recognize my self-made hurricanes. The words “faith” and “frantic” don’t go together…and so when I am characterized by the last, I know I’m in trouble.

Isaiah 28.16 says,

therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion,
   a stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:
   ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’

These words refer to the people of Israel scurrying around trying to secure political protection from their enemy: it was madness and fruitless all at once. And I am all to familiar with that feeling.

Later, Isaiah says, in 30.15

thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel,”In returning and rest you shall be saved;
   in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

And earlier, in 26.3-4, 12

You keep him in perfect peace
   whose mind is stayed on you,
   because he trusts in you.
Trust in the LORD forever,
   for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock.
…O LORD, you will ordain peace for us,
   for you have indeed done for us all our works.

Our action, even when it is choosing inaction, has to be characterized by rest. By peace. By trust. It is there that we find our rescue, there that we find our true strength.

rest: the hard work of waiting

I can’t wait.

No, really, I can’t wait. Or at least, I am not very good at it. I can’t wait till after dinner to eat cookies, so I get that done before dinner. I can’t wait to check my email and favorite blogs and Facebook in the morning, even if there are hundred things I should be doing instead. Half the time I can’t wait for my kids to put their shoes on before heading out the door. I am, however, very good at waiting to clean the bathroom or iron last week’s — or was it last month’s? — laundry.

And that’s just the stuff that doesn’t really matter. There are those occasional emails I send off, asking some “important” question, and I am a tangle inside until I hear back. And couple years ago when we were actively looking for a house and it took a year and half? I only checked the MLS every three hours.

Really, I have  not had to wait for much in life; I know that. But those times I have, it is hard work. It is exhausting. It is amazing how “doing nothing” can have that effect on your emotions, mind and body, but we all identify with the “sickness” that waiting for something big can often bring.

Isaiah 40.30-31 says,

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
   and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
   they shall walk and not faint.

Whatever it is we are waiting for, when we can shift our perspective into waiting on God, we are promised rest. That’s kinda what trust does: those inside tangles slow down when we recognize we are in the care of an all-powerful God. And when we stop fighting the wait, stop working so hard and wasting energy on hurrying what cannot be hurried…we find rest. We find renewed energy to wait, or to proceed as God would direct.

And beyond gaining an ability in the moment, Isaiah 64.4 says,

From of old no one has heard
   or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
   who acts for those who wait for him.

We can rest because God promises to “act for those who wait for him.” God doesn’t just promise an ooey-gooey feeling, an ability to make it through the tough times, he promises an outcome. He promises action on our behalf. There is real, and not just imagined or felt, strength and rest in waiting on God.

rest: la-di-dah

When I was thesaurusing (it’s a new word, haven’t you heard?) my advent theme for this week, rest, I saw the words “freedom from labor, responsibility, or strain”. And I thought I had never before seen better words to describe the faith God intends for us.

I mean, it’s stunning. Nothing is required of us for salvation: simply belief, simply faith, simply rest.

More vividly than ever, it is seeming to me that this is what separates what Christ offers us from every other religion. There was no rest for those who worshipped the idols in ancient Israel’s day. There is no rest for Muslims. There is no rest for Mormons. There is no rest when the goodness, the pureness of your faith depends on your ability to remain connected to whatever higher power you are connecting to. In every other religion, salvation or its equivalent, rest directly upon effort and personal action.

But Jesus? He offers rest. He says, I know you are unable to be good enough; I will do all the work. 

The book of Isaiah has some pretty humorous, pretty acerbic words for the idols and those that worshipped them in his day. On more than one occasion he brings to light the absurdity of the arrangement: humans are creating their own salvation. How can what you create ever be greater than you? And how can something less than you ever possibly save you?

And yet, we still believe it. Since Isaiah’s time we have only invented more man-made ways of drawing near to God. But the result is still the same: it is fruitless. As J. Alec Motyer says in his commentary of Isaiah, “human initiative, seeking to produce divine response, is at the heart of non-biblical religion and every perversion of biblical religion”.

Because even we who know better still fall into that lie, that we are responsible for our own goodness. Certainly, we do have a responsibility to respond to God, to love Him, and by so doing, to do or not do what pleases him. But those actions, those successes and those failures, in no way affect our status, our salvation, our inheritance as His children. Our salvation has been secured for us by someone else: our Rescuer.

The kids got a Seeds Family Worship CD yesterday, a “verses-set-to-music” kind of thing (and not all that bad, music-wise), and second song is this: Ephesians 2:8-9 “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”. The joyful chorus sings out “la-di-dah, la-di-dah…it is the gift of God, it is the gift of God”. It is the kind of chorus that makes you want to skip without a care through a field of long, green grass on a warm spring day. Which I think is a nice picture of grace, of rest, of faith.

So that is to say, if our faith IS characterized by “labor, responsibility, or strain”, then it is a false faith, a faith placed in ourselves. Let us rest. Let us walk in truth. Or maybe, let us skip through the field and sing “la-di-dah.”

Rest

Rest: Freedom from labor, responsibility, or strain; to cease motion, work or activity; to be at peace or ease; to be, become, or remain temporarily stil, quiet, or inactive; to be supported

 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
   because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
   he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
   and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
   to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes

Iasaiah 61:1-3

I am hungry for rest this week.