By Alex Florez
If you can picture little kids’ faces when you offer them ice cream for dinner or when you tell them you have Santa’s personal cell phone number, you’d have a good idea of what my face looks like when I fantasize about that sweet, seemingly unattainable treasure called “rest.”
When I picture myself resting, here’s the scene: 100 percent solitude, everyone in the world simultaneously forgets how to get in touch with me, and a completely blank to-do list. I’m on my living room couch with a stack of books just within reach, my laptop fully charged, enough food to feed a little league team and enough coffee to make a turtle sprint across the street.
There is definitely value in having some alone time, unplugging, and having a “brain break” from time to time, but my fantasies about rest actually have darker implications. I’m not just alone; I’m isolated. I’m not just unplugging; I’m trying to disappear. I’m not just giving my brain a rest; I’m trying to ignore the sense I have that I am existentially inadequate.
In my brain, rest is something I do in absolute, unmitigated solitude. In the Bible, rest is something to be experienced in the presence of God. When “He leads me beside quiet waters” (Psalm 23:2), He walks by my side, shows me the way, and reassures me that He is with me always. When I walk in the shadow of death, I can open my eyes in confidence and say to my Shepherd, “You are with me” (Psalm 23:4).
It’s ok to take a break from being around people, but I must not cut myself off from the presence of the Lord under any circumstances.
When I turn off my laptop and cellphone, I’m often pretending that I have no responsibilities and that no one needs anything from me—including the Lord. But He doesn’t want me to lose my connection with Him, even for a second. He knows I need His help to manage and maintain everything He has ordained for my life. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). He goes on to say, “Take my yoke upon you” (v.29), which suggests that I’m going where He goes from now on; I am inextricably bound to Him for the journey ahead.
For years, I’ve pursued a kind of rest that shuts out everything and everyone, including the Lord Himself. But Scripture clearly invites me into something deeper and more rejuvenating. Rather than spending time alone, detaching from the devices that connect me to others, and turning my brain off so I can justify hiding, isolating, and escaping, I must reorient my understanding of rest. True rest, the kind prescribed in the Bible, is not just the absence of people, responsibilities, and expectations so universally present in this world; true rest requires the presence of Jesus.
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