Return to your rest, my soul,
For the Lord has been good to you.
Psalm 116:7
My wife and I have an eight-month-old baby named William. I love him and adore him more than I thought was possible. It might be cliché to say that, but it doesn’t make it any less true. There’s a movie that came out this year called Collateral Beauty. In the movie, Edward Norton’s character is having a dialogue with Love (yeah, it’s pretty existential). In this conversation, he was trying to describe what it was like to see his daughter for the first time. He says, “In that moment, I realized that I wasn’t feeling love; I was becoming it.” I was struck by the simplicity and the profundity of this statement, especially in regards to our Heavenly Father.
For the Lord has been good to you.
Psalm 116:7
My wife and I have an eight-month-old baby named William. I love him and adore him more than I thought was possible. It might be cliché to say that, but it doesn’t make it any less true. There’s a movie that came out this year called Collateral Beauty. In the movie, Edward Norton’s character is having a dialogue with Love (yeah, it’s pretty existential). In this conversation, he was trying to describe what it was like to see his daughter for the first time. He says, “In that moment, I realized that I wasn’t feeling love; I was becoming it.” I was struck by the simplicity and the profundity of this statement, especially in regards to our Heavenly Father.
God is Himself love. He is perfect love, and he expresses
that love to us by abiding in us as we abide in him. He places upon us his
sonship, his daughtership and calls us His children. We are defined by the love
of God. The apostle John describes himself as “the one whom Jesus loved,” not
out of boastfulness, but out of acceptance of his identity in Jesus. God
loves us because his breath abides in us. His being is what gave us life. So it
must break God’s heart to see us place our identity in things other than
Him—our achievements, our bodies, fame, pleasure, addiction.
It’s like we fill
our spiritual lungs with things that will only bring us death, fumes of sin.
You might wonder what this has to do with rest. When we
rest, or when we Sabbath, it provides us the space to remember our reliance on God
and not the work of our own hand. It allows us to exist apart from the things
that we can produce. Sabbath is God’s way of showing us that our identity rests
in the fact that we are His children, and that’s it.
But we are averse to rest from the day we are born. Many of
the parents reading this will understand where I’m coming from when I say that
many babies and small children resist rest and sleep. My son, for example, will
begin to exhibit signs of fatigue. He’ll rub his little red eyes. He’ll open
his mouth for an earth shattering yawn. He will begin to get fussy and become
unsettled about the lack of energy he has to throw toys at the dog. So his
mother and I see the signs of exhaustion and we attempt to lay him down to
rest, to sleep. We know that once he rests, he will have the energy to continue
doing what he was doing before, but he is conflicted. He knows that if
he goes to sleep, he’ll have to stop doing what he was doing. So he fights it.
He cries. He physically pushes us away as we attempt to rock and soothe him.
Why is it that even at such a young age, we don’t want to
take the time to rest?
I am so guilty of relying on my own will and strength to
determine my worth instead of allowing God’s love to form my true identity.
There’s a song that a worship leader, Stephanie Frizzell-Gretzinger, wrote
about resting in God. This song was inspired by her love for her own daughter.
It’s called “Cecie’s Lullaby,” I have put the link below. I hope you enjoy it,
and I hope you find the time to rest in God’s love for you. May His love be
what gives you life and purpose.
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