REST AND PROMISE OF REST

What is rest? A bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities: freedom from activity or labor. Rest means REST. Rest from our activities, rest from labour and rest in our thoughts.

Rest is the word for today.

Maybe some of us are struggling with health issues, marital issues, or children issues because we simply don't know the meaning of rest. And we never stop going long enough to address certain things. It will cause us problems if we don't know how to pull back and rest, especially if we are the type of person that feels like we always have to be doing something and we never stop "to smell the flowers" so to speak.

Let's get out of that routine for a short time. Let our minds sit for a bit and just have no thoughts running through them. And let's enjoy the quietness of rest.

The Bible says the following in Genesis 2:3: "Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

That God blessed the seventh day means that He set it apart for holy use.

We live in an action orientated world!

There always seems to be something to do and no time to rest. If God Himself rested from His work, we should not be surprised that we also need rest.

God emphasized this necessity in the Ten Commandments by commanding the observance of the Sabbath.

Jesus demonstrated this principle when He and His disciples left in a boat to get away from the crowds. Doing God's work is very important, but Jesus recognized that to do it effectively we need periodic rest and renewal.

I know that Jesus and His disciples, however, did not always find it easy to get the rest they needed. In the same token, we can find ourselves with the same dilemma, but one thing is for sure that our times of rest refresh us for times of service.

It's safe to say that if God took a rest from all His work, then we too should take a rest from all our work. God didn't do this necessarily because He needed rest. He did this to set an example for us! Just because we don't go into work It doesn’t mean we are resting. Sometimes we take our work home with us. And while we should be resting, in our minds and thoughts we are still trying to figure things out. That's not resting.

Take this verse and pin it up somewhere so we can be reminded that it is not just OK to rest, but it is a necessity.

But let us have a look at recent times, a little more than 65 years ago, in his April 1951 farewell address to the United States congress, General Douglas MacArthur grimly stated his thoughts about global conflicts in which he played a major role. Speaking as a life-long military man - senior leader at some of modern history's fiercest battles - he put the entire weight of his experience into his observation that, although mankind has from the beginning of time sought peace, all efforts for international peace have ultimately failed. Chillingly, he warned : 'If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.'

Mankind has not yet devised that system, and we find ourselves today in a world at war. Conflicts rage across many parts of the globe, from insurgency and guerrilla combat in the developing world, to full scale war and nationwide uprisings in the Middle East, a few of which have involved some of the mightiest governments in the world. There are many ongoing wars and conflicts of various sizes. Some make the headlines more than the others, for example the Syrian civil war.

Untold amounts of money and resources are poured down the fiery jaws of war, and this great cost is overshadowed by the vast loss of human lives that are shoveled into this furnace, with the price too often paid by far more civilians than soldiers.

Is this normal?

What is going on in the world? Is all this fighting the 'normal' condition of human life? What is the solution, and is there hope on the near future for an end to it all, and actually, an end that we can look forward to, rather than the all-to-real possibility of nuclear or biological disaster?

When we turn to the Bible, we see an answer to every question. The inspired Word of God tells us what has happened, what is happening, and what is to come.

The Apostle James warned clearly and sharply that violence and war are the results of wrong desire, and wrong motives (James 4:1). He goes further and explains that these quarrels result from evil desires battling within us - we want more possessions, more money, higher status, more recognition.

At the same time, however, we know that God sees through even the best of human reasoning, because He alone knows our hearts. The prophet Isaiah was inspired anciently to write what even the great "man-of-war" Douglas MacArthur was able to recognize in recent history, that the "way of peace" is not known to man (Isaiah 59:8).

God knows that the way of peace is not through the governments of this age, their policies, nor through the revolutions and philosophies of man. No matter the cause, all that we do only adds volumes to an encyclopedic history of violence. Morals and ethics are lost in the reciprocal shedding of blood. We need something greater than human reasoning can provide for themselves. We need God's plan, the one that He has set in motion long ago to redeem mankind from the works of war and strife, and to bring about a time of divine rule on this earth, under Jesus Christ, when finally planet Earth will learn the ways of peace, not war. Then, the whole world will receive God's promise of rest as it says in Hebrews 4:1.

A time is coming when the "new normal" will be world peace!

Consulting material:

1. A promise of rest - Tomorrow's World July-August 2016, William L. Williams

2. NIV Bible - Zondervaan