Homework for Labor Day Weekend: REST

Rest is a forgotten art. Most of us believe rest to be a good thing. We see the rhythm of work and rest that God modeled for us in Genesis. But we have a hard time putting it into practice.

Overworking cuts against the pattern God inscribed into creation. We sometimes overwork when we try to find our significance or personal value in our work. We should find our worth in God, the giver of our ability to work, not in the work itself.

What’s missing in the errors of overwork? A commitment to true, biblical rest. Rest allows us to reassign proper value to our work. Rest ensures that we do not overwork. Rest ensures that we do not become machine-like commodities, valuable only for the goods or services we produce. A proverb of unknown origin encourages us to seek a dignifying balance: “If you work with your mind, you must rest with your hands; if you work with your hands, you must rest with your mind.”

Rest also recalibrates the market-drive values of the Western mind. German philosopher Josef Pieper touched on this in his essay “Leisure, the Basis of Culture.”

“Leisure is not the mere absence of work, but an attitude of mind or soul in which you are able to contemplate and enjoy things as they are in themselves, without regard to their value or their immediate utility. The work-obsessed mind — as in our Western culture — tends to look at everything in terms of efficiency, value, and speed. But there must also be an ability to enjoy the most simple and ordinary aspects of life, even ones that are not strictly useful, but just delightful.” 

REST THIS WEEKEND!!

Did you know the word SABBATH means REST? COME TO CHURCH TO REST IN THE PRESENCE OF OUR LOVING LORD!

See you Sunday,