Rest

 September 15, 2021

Sabbath days don’t always fall on a Saturday. Sometimes they seemingly pop up out of nowhere to slow things down and give us a breather. Even in retirement, our days are usually pretty full…a bit slower pace perhaps, but still full. For me, it’s being part of our worship team, leading a men’s Bible study, two different prayer groups, calling on people for our pastor, teaching bass at our school of the arts, all in addition to regular chores needing to be done, and supporting our grandchildren in their sports endeavors. There are very few days that don’t have something written in the calendar.

Today was one of those days. After my morning prayer time with two friends, the calendar was completely blank, so I decided to clean out the drawers in my dresser and night stand. That may not sound like much, but only if you don’t know how long this stuff has been accumulating. A fair amount of it I could throw out, but there were also mementos—cards from my wife, notes from our kids, old photos, etc., all of which I sorted through. Unexpectedly, I found the journal of a man who had been imprisoned at Andersonville during the Civil War, a couple books from the archives of Arch Merrill, who decades ago wrote extensively about Western New York. 

On the surface of things, I didn’t accomplish much today. Some might even say the day was wasted, but for me, it was a Sabbath—a day of rest to let my soul catch up with the rest of me. Too often, we get rushing about so frantically that who we are inside gets lost in the chaos of activity. Even the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading and prayer can inadvertently become part of the mania of everyday life if we rush through it so we can say we did it. We American Christians are a busy people; the call of Christ to reach the world with the Gospel often weighs so heavily upon us that we forget it is Christ’s call, and that he calls us first of all to be with him, to “find rest unto our souls” (Matthew 11:29), and that the only burden he bids us shoulder is the Cross. In cleaning out and reviewing old stuff, I found rest today, and thank God that this day, too, is his plan for me.