Rhythms of Rest and Work
Dear Saints,
I hope that reading these pastoral letters have been as much of an encouragement to you as writing them has been for me. I don’t know if you have experienced this before, but I believe that the teacher often gets more from the lesson than the students. That was certainly the case with this series on the “one anothers” of Scripture, as the Spirit moved powerfully in my own heart, convicting and challenging me to not merely be a hearer of the word, but doer also (James 1:22).
This month in our pastoral letters we will be considering rhythms of rest and work in the Christian life. This is a topic that I wrote a chapter on last year in a book honoring my mentor, Douglas Kelly, entitled Generation to Generation: Writings in Honor of Douglas F. Kelly. We will adapt that chapter for use in these pastoral letters over the next month.
May I speak candidly for a moment? Before we begin exploring this subject, I confess this is an area of great weakness in my own life. Sleep and rest have never come easily to me, and for much of my life, rest has felt more like an enemy to me rather than a friend. As we work through this topic, my hope is that it will not only encourage you, but remind my own soul of the goodness of how God has made us for both rest and work, and both are intended to be good and gracious gifts from Him.
A Theology of Rest and Work
As we think about a theology of rest and work, we must begin where all theology starts: with God Himself. We serve a God who is, in Himself, all sufficient (the theological term is the “asiety” of God). He is dependent upon nothing else for life, strength, power, and so on. In terms of rest and work, this means that God is able to do all things to keep the universe in existence (His “work”) and yet He has no need of rest. Thus Psalm 121:4 says, “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”
Though we are made in His image, we are not made to be all sufficient, but rather we are designed to be dependent. God has created us for work, but our bodies also require rest. Rest is not a necessary evil resulting from our finitude, but rather a gracious gift from our Heavenly Father (as Psalm 127:2 says, “he gives to his beloved sleep.”) This perspective on rest reminds us of two important truths: there is a God, and I’m not Him!
But as we will see, the rest we need is not merely for our bodies. God has made humans, body and soul. Therefore, physical rest is not our only need- or even our greatest need- but rather rest for our souls. And thankfully, as Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30 wonderfully illustrate, what our souls desperately need, Christ abundantly provides for us in the Gospel.
Created for Rest and Work
God created Adam with an extraordinary job description: tend and keep the earth. Equally significant is the fact that Adam was created on the sixth day, meaning that Adam’s first full day on earth, before he would undertake any of his duties, was a day of rest. Like a tourist taking in the wonders of a new city, Adam’s first full day was spent thinking deeply about his God, so that his heart could be calibrated to the true north of his Heavenly Father’s glory. All the subsequent work he was called to do would flow from that rest, upward to the glory of God. This was God’s divine purpose: work flows from rest. As Adam rested and rejoiced in God, His duties to tend and keep the earth would be a great joy and privilege.
But alas, the evil one, jealous of God’s glory, despised Adam’s rest in God. Tempting Adam to question God’s trustworthiness, the serpent set a trap and the man stepped in. The result was not equality with God as the serpent promised, but rather a lifetime of working to be his own savior, while also knowing at the deepest level he was radically unfit for that job. In an instant, work lost its transcendence and rest became an impossibility.
These effects of the fall are still seen in our world today, as most people tend to see work and rest as polar opposites, equating work with virtue and rest with laziness. Yet biblically speaking, work and rest are not opposites; they are rhythmic complements which glorify God and bless us when they are in proper balance. We were created so that our rest fuels our work, our work builds in us a healthy capacity for rest, and both are vital aspects of our worship of God.
Restless Hearts
If work is not the opposite of rest, then what is? The opposite of rest is restlessness. With the entry of sin into the world, our first parents (and all their posterity) experienced a deep sense of inadequacy and spiritual nakedness so acute that they hid themselves with fig leaves. But the makeshift coverings only heightened their workload as continual work was now needed to keep themselves hidden. The serpent’s deception interjected into God’s world a new rhythm: work, work, work, yet the only payment he could give was ongoing restlessness.
The effects are clear today: Rather than work being a means for glorifying God and blessing our neighbor, we now have an innate tendency to seek meaning and security through the labors of our hands. Our jam-packed calendars all testify, not to the busyness of our schedules, but the restlessness of our hearts. So much of what we call work today is really an expression of that restlessness—a desire to create identity, to find security, and to prove our sufficiency rather than resting in the sufficiency of who God is.
If rest could ever come for man’s weary soul, it must come from God Himself.
Definition of Biblical Rest
In 2010, I enrolled at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a bit of personal background, the main reason I chose RTS Charlotte was to study under my friend and mentor, Dr. Douglas Kelly (in whose honor this chapter was originally written). It was an extraordinary experience to study with world-class pastor-scholars and prepare for ministry.
It was also an exhausting experience as I was spread very thin with courseload, work as Dr. Kelly’s teaching assistant, an internship at a local church, pulpit supply at my home church, all on top of personal and family obligations. I already knew my diagnosis: I needed rest…and it always seemed just a semester away.
I was in my second year of seminary when Dr. Kelly introduced me to a fascinating work written by one of his mentors, Dr. William Still. The book was entitled Rhythms of Rest and Work. Dr. Kelly sat under Mr. Still’s ministry at Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen, and the two remained friends until Mr. Still went to be with the Lord in 1997. Not only were the two men kindred souls in their love for God, but also in their understanding of the rhythms of rest and work that God had built into His creation, which exist both for our good and His glory. Mr. Still’s words resonated with me:
The fundamental need of humanity is rest, in the sense that man needs to submit himself to God, in order that the divine life may be poured progressively into every part of his being. This is negative in as much as it requires man to cease from himself, that the Almighty may fill him with life-giving grace, but it is replete with the positive and vibrant blessings of God and will last to all eternity.[1]
He was right: The only cure for human restlessness is to rest in the sufficiency of divine grace. While physical rest is certainly a necessity and one that Scripture does address, we can never get enough physical rest to calm the restlessness of the human soul as we navigate life in a sin-cursed word. The soul must come to rest securely in God, or as St. Augustine famously said, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”[2]
And mercifully, what our souls crave, our God provides in His Son, Jesus Christ. He commands us to “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him” (Ps. 37:7). He bids us to come, all who are weary, and find rest for our souls (Matt. 11:28-30). He alone can provide rest, for He alone is, in Himself, perfectly at rest. To quote Mr. Still again, “When infinite intelligence finds infinite perfections in itself, infinite stability and integrity of character are assured. This integrity is simply another name for God’s righteousness, or rightness.”[3] When He becomes our rest, and we work to His glory, our souls are truly in a happy condition.
Rhythms of Rest and Work
God has designed the world with rhythms of rest and work built into the infrastructure: the day for working, the night for sleeping. Six days for laboring, one day for resting. Seasons for sowing and seasons for reaping. These all reflect the finitude and dependence of our souls. We will consider in two weeks how those rhythms, especially the rhythm of keeping the Sabbath holy, are integral to the vitality of our souls.
But before we get to that, next week we will consider how the Lord Jesus gives us true and lasting rest in the Gospel. I look forward to studying this topic with you, and I pray that you and I both will benefit from it!
All my love-
Pastor Alex
[1] William Still, Collected Writings of William Still: Studies in the Christian Life, Vol 2, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1994), 295.
[2] Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.
[3] Still, Collected Writings of William Still 2, 297.
