Pastor's Corner: Rest and refresh

Summertime is a time we often consider as a season of rest, a season of play, a season of taking time off, even if just for a little while, to escape the routines of life and refresh our energy. It's the season of vacationing that was incorporated into our psyche from the days of our youth when we anticipated an extended break from school.

Those of us grown into adulthood still cling to those nostalgic daydreams of a lazy, carefree summer as we remain constrained to our forty hour per week careers. For some, summer is just the season when the air conditioner runs in the office. For most, this season simply offers a different rhythm to our responsibilities, sprinkled with hopes of getting in at least one temporary escape before the snow flies. The long weekend or a week's leave is ever so enticing to our overworked and harried lives.

Rather than coveting those fleeting vacations that leave a week's worth of work piled up in its wake, God recommends intentionally creating space for a weekly mini-break that can offer regular refreshment without the overload hangover when you're back on the job. It's called the Sabbath.

Knowing that humans are not machines, Jesus said that the Sabbath rest was intended for us (Mark 2:27). Hebrews 4:9-10 adds, "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His." We need less large chunks of holidays filled with as much uncommon fun as we can cram in, and more routine periods of rest that bring a greater holistic vitality to mind, body, and spirit.

A Sabbath rest is not a day to sit around and do nothing in a boring state of lethargy. God's prescribed rest is a way for us to release our need to control more, earn more, and do more. It's His way of helping us manage our stress as we turn our cares over to God and watch Him work out the details. Sabbath is less a day of escaping our labors and more a day of trusting the Lord to generate a fruit of refreshment so that we might labor on in a renewed spirit.

As the psalmist points out, on the Sabbath we may lay our requests before God in the morning and wait (or rest!) in expectation (Psalm 5:3).

God never gave us a Sabbath summer to enjoy once a year, but He did give us four seasons of weekly Sabbaths to sustain us throughout the year. So, this summer, make this a season of finding one day each week to let go, trust, and find rest and refreshment in Him.

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Theresa Danley, CLP

Milk River Churches