Rest in God

On a recent Friday, I felt tired. More than tired, actually; I felt exhausted, the kind where I questioned my ability to physically do one more thing. My strength was gone, and my will was gone; I felt physically, mentally and spiritually depleted. It had been a busy, hard week; I was done. I needed to rest.

I am a believer in napping as a spiritual exercise -- obviously not as the sole spiritual exercise, but as one among many in the repertoire. As I worked through the rest of the tasks I had to do before I could get to that nap, encouragement of God being our renewal echoed through my head.

It is okay to be tired sometimes. It is okay to rest. It is okay to ask God to be the one to hope and believe for us while we take a break and abandon ourselves to peace in God.

We can remember Jesus' words in Matthew 11:28-30 (NAB): "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

As people, the journey can get long sometimes. Our worries, busy-ness and physical ailments are all part of having a fallible mind and living through a fallible body. We are not God; we are human. And that means we get tired. It's part of who we are.

As love would have it, it seems that despite our dismay at our own weakness, our God delights in us and cherishes us, telling us power is made perfect in weakness. That's a promise we can rest in.

The idea of resting in God also reminds me of Romans 5:1, 3-5 (NAB), which states, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ ... We even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

I love the string of steps in the process to not being disappointed listed in those verses: affliction, endurance, character, hope, love. In that order. When the endurance part of the process becomes wearing, we can rest assured our God is refining us, producing proven character. We can also rest assured we have a God who understands us, and who wants to be our all, including a soft place for us to rest our head and heart.

I have no other deep, insightful revelations today, except to say: it is okay to be tired. Rest in our God.