So what was the answer to this busy-is-better lie? How could I wean myself off my habit of running myself (and everyone around me) ragged, often in the name of Christ? What would it mean to rest in what is, instead of always chasing what could be?
In his book The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon writes this:
The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms, the purpose of wine is to be wine. Things are precious before they are contributory. To be sure, God remains the greatest good, but for all that, the world is still good in itself. Indeed, since He does not need it, its whole reason for being must lie in its own goodness; He has no use for it; only delight.
The purpose of a raspberry is to be a raspberry. The purpose of a cloud is to be a cloud. The purpose of snail is to be a snail. Things are precious first. God has no use for them, only delight in them. How amazing. Could this mean that naps can be just naps—and not a pitstop before the next event? If Capon got it right, then perhaps the purpose of rest, the Sabbath sort of rest, is to just rest.
Perhaps the reason we get Sabbath wrong—or have abandoned it altogether—is that we came to see resting as a highly inefficient way of acquiring fuel to do more instead of a sacred call to restoration and wholeness. Maybe, before we can celebrate the Sabbath as God intended, we must first be willing to see rest as a precious gift instead of a useful tool.
Jerusalem Jackson Greer is an author and lay minister; she lives with her family in Arkansas. Devotional text taken from At Home in This Life: Finding Peace at the Crossroads of Unraveled Dreams & Beautiful Surprises, copyright © 2017 by Jerusalem Jackson Greer. Used by permission of Paraclete Press; www.paracletepress.com. Learn more via this video or by downloading a free chapter.
