A New Year, A New Time to Rest
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
As you begin this year, how might you be more intentional about promoting rest for you and for others? What I have found is that our society makes us think intentionally about work, but not intentionally about rest. And even when we think about rest, can we think about pausing from labors more than just the paid ones? For instance, it’s important to think about consumerism as a kind of labor, for you and for the laborers providing the service or goods you pay for.
In order to pause from activity, we have to be intentional about our rest. We see in Exodus 16 that God is all about this. In the passage, God had just freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and they were now in the wilderness figuring themselves out as a new nation. They were free, but hungry. So God provided food from heaven for them, and their only job was to gather it. The catch was that they only were to gather as much as needed for that day. Moreover, because they were supposed to rest on the Sabbath, they were supposed to gather twice as much on Friday to cover Friday and Saturday’s needs. But some people tried to save food for the next day, and that rotted, and some chose to search for food on Saturday, yet found none. God reprimanded them for their greed, and called them to rest on the Sabbath as instructed.
This is God helping Israel become intentional about our rest and work. They had to discern what was needful for that day, and do nothing more nor less than that. Deliberate work is the other side of the coin of deliberate rest.
Trusting in God to provide graciously for your rest ought lead to you setting clear goals for what you and your community can accomplish in any given day. I emphasize your community because our society is crazy about personalized goal-setting (a symptom of late-stage capitalism, where everyone is their own boss). Such a model of goal-setting often enshrines individual achievement, which in the West is most possible for White men without financial debt. So instead of re-inscribing “Euro-masculinist self-sufficiency” (see Willie James Jennings’ book After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging), I am pointing us to the logic of Scripture, which emphasizes the role of the community in helping us approach goals.
In the history of the church, a way we have done this is through the rule of life, which is an externalized set of commitments that guide your days. Here’s an article that explains it well. But suffice it to say, the spiritual practice that 6th century monk St. Benedict made famous in his abbot community consists of a matrix of four disciplines: prayer, work, rest, and community.
Right now my rule of life simply consists of these: pray still, play music, sleep enough, serve my family. Those are my non-negotiables every day. And I try to make decisions about my life through that lens. In so doing, that keeps me from trying to gather too much manna for any given day. If I have to work late into the night, then I may cancel discretionary meetings the next day so I can nap, or rely more heavily on my community so that I can find ways to sleep. Keeping to the rule keeps me from planning too much, from being stressed by too many commitments. Most importantly, Keeping the rule keeps me focused on God, who is behind the rule and ultimately sustains me graciously through the Holy Spirit. And learning of others’ rules helps me support them stay focused too.
Do you have a rule of life? If you don’t, I’d be happy to talk with you about it. And if you do, feel free to share so that I can pray for it!
May we keep the rules together and find freedom.
This post originally appeared on Julian Davis Reid’s substack called “Julian’s Note,” a weekly newsletter about music, Christian faith, and rest to promote the practice of contemplation & creativity. Read more and subscribe here.
Julian Davis Reid
Julian Davis Reid is an artist-theologian who uses words and music to invite us into the restful lives we were created to live. He is a founding member of the jazz-electronic fusion group The JuJu Exchange and hosts contemplative retreats called Notes of Rest.
Julian has performed and spoken throughout the country and around the world, and he has released three studio albums, the latest being Rest Assured, a collection of hymns on solo piano. He earned his M.Div. at Candler School of Theology at Emory University and his B.A. in philosophy at Yale University. He and his wife Carmen live and worship in his hometown Chicago.
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