In an increasingly connected world, few of us are ever truly “off the clock” from work anymore. Smartphones alert us to emails, task lists, and notifications of all that we are missing when we are not at work. Before the days of smartphones, work could be left behind at the office. There was a clearer distinction between home and work. Home was a place of refuge, while the office was a place of work.
But what about the work of the home that doesn’t abide by conventional work hours? Laundry doesn’t punch a time clock. The grass grows whether you want it to or not. Children get sick and are up all night, needing to go to the doctor.
Because the work of the home is never really complete, it is easy to avoid the clear commands in Scripture to rest (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:11). How do you rest when it’s never truly done? But the psalmist tells us that it is useless to spend our days anxiously trying to get it all done. At the heart of this anxiety is a lack of trust that God is the one who establishes the work of our hands (Ps. 90:17). Even our best attempts at getting it all done are owing to God’s gracious provision for us. He gives us the energy. He gives us the materials and the time. But he also gives us limitations to remind us that only he is God, and only he gets his to-do list done.
When God commanded his people to rest, he pointed back to the fact that he also rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2). But his rest was one of completion, not out of a need for sleep. He had finished the work and it was perfect. We are just the opposite. The work is never done and rarely perfect, but we always need sleep. Failing to acknowledge that we are finite places our work above everything else.
Work is part of who we are, but it’s not all of who we are. We were made for work, but we were also made to rest. And in our rest, we are reminded again that we serve a God who always gets it all done, even when we cannot. Intentionally turning from our work toward rest is a tangible example of trusting the Lord with every part of our days. When we leave a task unfinished, we are saying, “Only you can do this, Lord.” It’s a response of humble trust towards an all-powerful and sufficient God who never needs rest and is always working for us.
Courtney Reissig is a writer living in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of Glory in the Ordinary: Why Your Work in the Home Matters to God. Learn more at CourtneyReissig.com or on Twitter at @courtneyreissig.
