Life is an exhausting endeavor.
Consider the totality of your daily life for a moment: your job, your family, your friends, your commitments, your hobbies, your aspirations, and your (and everyone else’s) expectations. Each requires individual attention, time, and effort. The collective scarcity of all three dictates that any free moments in our day be converted into production in one or more of these bins. The ideas of rest and relaxation are oft dismissed as fantasy.
Furthermore, we struggle in vain to maintain a self-generated and restrictive perception. We find ourselves unable to truly relax or simply be ourselves because we are unable to drop this facade. Relegated to a role several degrees off reality, we trudge through the days and weeks.
We can manage this juggling act for a period, but eventually we must succumb. Life faced with our own limited ability to affect it is overwhelming. To survive in a healthy fashion we all need an opportunity to step back, rest, and reset. Like David in the Psalm below, we need to unburden ourselves if only for a moment.
“God’s a safe house for the battered,
a sanctuary during bad times.
The moment you arrive, you relax;
you’re never sorry you knocked.”
Before I can allow myself to relax, I require myself to set a number of conditions. All pending tasks must be complete, the laundry needs to be folded, the house needs to be clean, there must be no meals in the immediate future, and everyone needs to be taken care of. Unfortunately, by the time these conditions are set, I am often so burnt out that the time for relaxation has now morphed into the time for sleep.
The significance of what the author of the Psalm is pointing to in verses nine and ten is relaxation at arrival. Peace in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty. The opportunity to experience the satisfaction and rest that comes with the completion of the tasks listed above, regardless of their status. And it comes in such a counter-intuitive fashion; not through our determination, but our surrender. For only when we accept that we do not have full control and cannot achieve peace unilaterally can we truthfully submit our lives and concerns over to the One who does and can. And what a freeing experience that might be if we can only get out of our own way.
When was the last time you found yourself able to fully relax? This week I encourage you to set aside a time, unburden yourself from the tyranny of endless task completion, and enjoy the peace only God can provide.