You’re Just Supposed to Sit Here???? (Part 4 of 4)

Rest.  Often associated with sleep. Sitting. Reading. I go get more coffee. Rest some more. Take a breath, and then another...rest. I’m so bad at resting. I’d rather go. Do. Accomplish. Cross off the to-do list. To lie on a cliff and do nothing is not easy for me. I’ve thrived when overworked and under self-inflicted pressure, where others dare not tread. Yet here I am. Waiting. Sitting.  Immobile and stuck in neither a place I intend to be, nor a place I want to stay.

Doesn’t matter what I wanted though. Rest. Sleep. Sit. Scale life back a lot. Can I breathe still? Things I took for granted are gone, but slowing life down is good too. God rested after his work was done and it’s stupid to think I don’t need rest. Exodus 34:21 ~ Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest. 

Rest... I grit my teeth and attempt to relax on the cliff’s edge.

Regardless of how it feels, we all need to rest on God. Rest on his word. I need to rest in his arms of comfort and peace. SIT. Maybe the world will pass by. Maybe time will cease to exist. Maybe you’ll miss something. Maybe a bit of life will escape. Maybe I won’t travel the world or ever be remembered because I took time to rest in God’s arms.

Psalms 62:5-6

Yes, my soul, find rest in God;

   my hope comes from him.

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

   he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

Maybe I’ll learn what Lucy learned in the silence before dawn in Prince Caspian... that she could hear and see Aslan when the others were too busy with their goals and too weary from the day to wake and hear the Great Lion. It finally became clear to me that Lucy Pevencie is not the silly little sister, but the one most attuned to the workings of Aslan, while others are trying to accomplish their goal. She’s always first to see him in her stories, and desires to follow him from the journey’s start. Lucy is the one awakened to see the trees dancing and Aslan in their midst, called to go with him though no one else will follow. She’s the one before him, close to him, called by him, while all the others are sleeping. Eventually they all follow and the Lion is revealed to them when their faith catches up with what Lucy saw from the start.

Rest may not be easy or second nature, but a God desired, designed, instigated and enforced rest is a time of renewal and connection. As much as I hate it, the amount of learning it has resulted in being on this cliff’s edge, are grudgingly worth the times of silence and darkness.  To be still and know God, to be at rest enough to sense him, to seek him in peace while in the midst of terror of the cliff’s edge, is a strange sensation. Even in pain, to seek him quietly without questions, just to listen for his voice and learn you actually know his voice above and around all the other noise in life.

I do not like rest, but I love the arms of my “daddy-upstairs” comforting me. I do not like being immobile, but I do so love the sweet calm of his voice in my turmoil. I do not like the unknown, but I crave the closeness of his presence.

I’m still on a cliff and do not know when I shall move again. But regardless, I shall remember my God’s love and faithfulness. I shall return to his heart daily. I shall respond with praise and trust. And I shall rest in his arms, even after he directs me to rise up and walk again.

Remember, Return, Respond, and Rest.