My Rest

I struggle so hard with this concept.

Rest.

What is it?

It eludes me, slipping out of my grasp and I think of new ways to make my life simpler and then worry that I'm procrastinating at getting something done although there's nothing to do. I strive to rest.

And that's just it - I'm striving.

Only a few weeks ago at church, in Sunday School, we were discussing this concept of rest as a part of Charles Price's book Connect with God's Heart: Hebrews.

And it's penned in along the side of Hebrews chapter 4 in my Bible: rest = our position in Christ, not our circumstances

It's so hard. Maybe because I know that I can so easily hide myself away in the shell of myself, being a recluse in my room and reading books or being on-line and so I've tried to figure out a way to be involved with the family but keep finding myself retreating for rest.

I feel guilty when I rest. Honestly. I don't know what rest looks like for me, because I feel like such an anti-social introvert. What is the line between resting the way that my mind rests versus using it as an excuse and pushing away the opportunities that He has placed before me during this time when family is so near?

And I strive. I worry. I wrestle.

And I don't stop to hear. Don't stop to be still and to hear, "Rest, My child. Rest in all that I AM." Because penned beside chapter 4 just a little further up the page are the words "picture of sufficiency."

When I strive and worry, what am I really doing? I'm doubting all that He is. I'm doubting that He is everything that I need.

So often I do not simply strive in my day to day living, but in my spiritual life. I strive and try to conjure up peace in my heart or to stamp down boredom in routine in devotions or to try and put my mind in the right condition, or even to strive to be perfectly honest before Him.

And you know what? If I'm still, He calls, "Rest, My child. Rest in all that I AM."

He came as the Prince of Peace. He came to bring that rest between God and mankind, and He came to bring rest in humanity's frantic scrabbling for safety and assured footing.

Sometimes I'm so busy worrying that I don't rest in all that He's given me and all that He is.

And He speaks through the words of a friend who tells me to turn to His Words. Why is what I so desperately need what I so often seek last? You'd think that I'd learn... and she points me to Isaiah 58:11.

The LORD will guide you continually, giving  you water when  you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. (NLT)

It brings to mind two of my favourite verses in Isaiah:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength." (30:15)

So the LORD must wait for you to come to him so that he can show you his love and compassion. For the LORD is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for his help. (30:18)

The secret is purposely being still. Resting in all that He is, and that rest in my soul will spill out into my life. He has never failed me, so why do I keep thinking that maybe this time will be different? Silly me.

He's waiting. He has so much to give me if only I will be still and come before Him waiting to receive whatever it is that He would teach me.

Striving for rest is so useless, and He calls me to rest.

To rest in all that He is.

Bread

I was able to go to the last Quizzing practice here in town before Christmas break and the chapter they were studying this week was Matthew 15.

The person who was giving the devotional spent a little bit of time on the beginning stories but focused on the feeding of the 4,000.

And he asked a question that I had never really stopped to think about. Why did the disciples gather up the leftover food?

Suggestions were tossed around as we all contemplated the question. Maybe to show how big the miracle really was, or because the disciples were taught well by their moms never to waste food, or...

The lesson moved on as he talked about Jesus commanding them to pick up the food when He fed the 5,000  just a chapter earlier, although His command is only recorded in John's version.

He brought our attention to the bread mentioned earlier in Matthew 15, when the Canaanite woman pleads for Him to heal her daughter from demon-possession because "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."

Broadening the horizons, he talked about the Jesus connecting the feeding of the crowds to the giving of the manna in the desert. Every day for 40 years, they were sustained because of this miraculous bread that fell from the heavens.

They had left Egypt and had turned to one of their favourite habits, complaining. Among those complaints was the food and in response, God gave them manna and quail.

He satisfied their hunger and their doubt in Him.

And the leader drew the discussion back to the point where Jesus declares, "I am the Bread of Life." I honestly don't know where he went with it after this, but I remember the one thing that struck me about all of the situations that were strung together and the picture that I saw in all of them: His sufficiency.

He provided manna in the desert to a people just recently rescued and yet still crying out to be fed.

He provided Himself to a people to whom the Law was given but who could not be saved by following it, and they too were crying out to be fed.

And God answered their cry. Out of His infinite love and incredible mercy, He fed. He fed these hungry people with the true Bread. The Bread of Life that was broken for all mankind. His Son.

This season celebrates Jesus' birth, yes. It celebrates His life and His eventual journey to the cross and His resurrection, yes. But it also celebrates who He is today, the true Bread, the only One who can truly fill each and every human and to fully satisfy the craving for wholeness that sin causes.

He is our only remedy. He is our only true satisfaction.

He is the Bread of Life.

And I have to wonder whether another reason that Jesus commanded His disciples to gather up the leftover bread and fish was to show them that very same thing. That in everything, He is all-sufficient. We have nothing to worry when the One who can multiply fish and bread is on our side.

Not only do we not have to worry about our physical needs, but we can know that our spiritual needs are met to the full. Not only to the full, but overflowing, as His disciples found out.

Nothing in the world can satisfy, nothing can fill us to the full, nothing can bring us ultimate satisfaction, except one thing:

Jesus, the true Bread of Life.

In The Past

To Cece (my younger self):

I met you this evening, while sorting through the remnants of my past. Fingering through papers you wrote on with all the heart a little girl could muster.

I opened the stickers you so lovingly placed on little notes that you passed to your sister when she was having a bad day. Notes that make me chuckle. You are so dear to me, your heart shining through in every word, with her foremost on your heart. Have I unknowingly closed that shutter to an open heart? Every one of those notes, signed as Cece. I haven't been called that in years.

I read those journal entries from the days before your baptism and your passion and excitement for God's Word make me stand in amazement before a God who chose you at such a young age to be taught so much about what He was and how to know Him.

I flipped through the sketch book you coloured in, pictures of wedding dresses and animals and everything and anything else that filled your mind.

I found the Scripture copy book your grandmother sent you, with the spine cracked and falling apart, the first few pages filled with words that you put inside your heart.

I discovered notes from a little girl that I had forgotten you had such a close relationship with. Someone so much younger than you, yet you reached out and she wrote "I love you" in her scrawls.

I fingered the poems and hymns you copied out and hung around your room, a sign of the incredibly deep understanding that God somehow placed in your heart of who He was. It was nothing you did, and it never could have been, it was all what He chose to do.

I found the keys to your little locked diary and tried to decipher the faded coloured ink from one of your earliest journaling exploits. I read of your loneliness as you couldn't fit in because of your age.

And I see you and I smile and I wonder at how far God has brought me so that I am in the place that I am in right now. I so easily forget about you, I'm sorry to say. That young innocent one, whom God chose to break in so many ways and has brought through the fires hopefully molded more firmly into the image of His Son.

And it brings me back to the days of the jungles, of dancing in the warm rain, of snow chains on tires going through mud, of cocoa breaking, of climbing trees, of swimming in streams, of going to church, of everything that is my past. And it makes me so excited for my future. It makes me excited to meet you again when I return to those places, as I hear your laughter and see things from your eyes again when I go to each of those places that memory now renders hallowed.

It makes me excited about what He has done... and excited for what He will do.

And I find myself so thankful. So utterly and basely grateful for all that He has done. For how He made you, little Cece, and how He continues to grow me.

He didn't have to.... but He did.

Your older (and utterly grateful) self,
Christy

At Home

It's at times like this that I don't even know what to think or feel.

Home is such a complex word. It embodies a sense of comfort, familiarity, a homing point and being with those who mean the most to me. And this home has been my home for the past 5 years, but before that the jungles of Africa were home, and now Millar is my home for months at a time. Over all, this earth is not my home.

And as I walk through the door and get greeted by the familiar faces, hugged by familiar arms, see the changes in the house, move into a bedroom I've never slept in before, get used to the feel of my house again, to the rhythm of this family of mine, it is home.

There is home in the fact that I don't need to explain myself or why my thought process works in a certain way. There is home in the moments where sibling torture ensues, when I chase my little brother in a droid machine while playing Star Wars III Wii games, and in putting Boo to bed. There is home as I sit here, curled up in a chair, watching my sister do homework while I spend time on the crazy fast internet here.

There is home in the chaos here. There is home in the chaos in my heart. There is home in Him, in the way that He's shaping and molding me. There will never truly be a place when I am most at peace and most comfortable and most familiar until I reach heaven, but here on earth that place comes when I rest in His will.

And as I'm at home, I choose to make memories that will last. I choose to not spend my time on this amazingly fast internet and to get involved in my family's life. I'm not here to rest, although I am. I am here to serve, to be pro-active, to live out what I've been living like any other place I could go. And I'll fail, and fall, but He'll pick me up and set me back on the right track and help me to see that I'm here to learn lessons as well as encourage and teach others. This time at home? It's only another learning stage of life. I've learned that there is no such thing as rest in God's eyes. Yes, there is struggle and triumph and failure, but there is always learning.

I want to spend this time at home in the best way possible.

It's actually harder when it's a place where you feel so... at home.

Central

It’s so easy to get lost.

To get surrounded and tumbled around by the everyday petty things that cause me to worry and stress about what comes next. To take my eyes off of the One who controls the sea and instead to look at the depths that lie beneath me and to feel myself sinking, with my eyes on myself instead of on Him.

I scrabble around, looking for something to hold onto and come up empty-handed.

And I come to the disheartening conclusion that there will always be someone better at something than I am, and I will always miss out on something.

But I will gain something either way, and they spoke at church this week of rest.

Of resting in confidence of God’s sufficiency, knowing that the victory is already won.

It’s not an inactive rest, rather one that acts in the confidence that God will work. I am called to follow Him, knowing that He will provide and that I have nothing to worry about.

But so often, I make my future and my talents about my own desires instead of about His desires.

I get caught up in my life and when I come before Him, I spend my time focusing on myself and all that’s going wrong, instead of all that He’s blessed me with.

I forget to come with expectation and with eagerness to sit at His feet.

I come, wanting rest through immediate answers or a sense of peace instead of simply letting all things go and learning more of who He is and knowing that He is worthy of trust.

I forget to seek His kingdom first, although when I do so, all my needs will be supplied.

Not that I am to spend time *not* thinking about other things, but rather that every moment would have a focus on Him. 

Finals come up and it's easy to give way to rote memorization instead of heart internalization, Christmas comes and it can be turned into a family-centered holiday instead of a Christ centered one, and my identity and heart can be centered on others' expectations and thoughts instead of on the One who crafted each part.

So it's a conscious choice, and not always an easy one. It's hard to tear close of the headway that the world makes into my soul, but when I do, I find rest. 

Rest, through making Him the center of my every day, hour, moment, action, thought, word, and motive.