Tyler Stricklan
Summer has typically been my favorite season. It meant a break from school and my birthday. Summer always stirred up a longing for what felt like freedom, a time to slow down, an ease of pace in my daily life.
What people fail to tell you as a child, teen, or college student is you must soak up those summers of freedom because they pass quickly. I often wonder if other people have a nostalgic longing for a break in the summer, a time of extended rest.
We can take a stab at defining rest in several ways. For the sake of our readers, we will look at rest through the lens of Jesus. In creation, God labors for six days and then rests on the seventh.
The almighty, never-tiring God chose to relax. Jesus only had three years of active ministry, where he did so many things that John said if every event and detail were written down it would fill the world with books.
Yet, he regularly took naps, spent time in the quiet, and slowed down enough to commune with the father. Jesus was a busy man, but he had a rhythm of rest. My favorite story of Jesus taking a nap is when the disciples are out rowing on a lake, and a brutal storm rolls in.
Jesus is asleep while the boat gets tossed around by waves crashing over the sides, filling it with water. The disciples are freaking out, losing their minds at what looked like certain death by capsizing and drowning.
Jesus is unphased and in a state of relaxation that Jimmy Buffett only wishes he would have found. Life is busy. We complete one task only to find 10 more tasks that need to be completed. All the while, our daily lives march on.
At times that list of work turns into utter calamity, and we feel like we are drowning. We see people take a vacation and wish we had the time to take a lunch break, let alone a week off. We will grind our lives away for a company that will replace us if we die tomorrow.
Meanwhile, God sets the example for us to unbusy our lives once a week. Jesus takes a less strict approach but keeps a rhythm of rest and work. The question I find myself answering is, why am I afraid to take a break?
Truthfully, we major in the work hard or you will not eat part of scripture but forget to remember the day of rest and keep it holy. One of those is in the 10 Commandments. The other one is a bit of wisdom. John Mark Comer put it this way,
"... the solution to an over-busy life is not more time. It's to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.”
Providing for my family matters but showing up for them matters more. Working hard is an act of worship, but resting is too. I am not trying to convince you to take more naps, although the world might be more loving if we all got enough sleep.
Rather, following God means we regularly rest and recuperate. The longing for summer break, which I still have all these years later, is a reminder to practice Sabbath rest. We can find so much freedom when we look at the storm of life like Jesus did in the boat.
We know the man who silenced the winds and rain. When we need the storm around us calmed, rest found in Jesus is always the answer.
Tyler Stricklan is student ministry director at LifePoint Church in Minden.