“Come Away and Rest…”

Sitting in the Atlanta airport yesterday, waiting for the final flight of my weekend trip, I  wrote a great post for this blog. Since you will never read it, I can say it was fantastic! =) I had proofed most of it and just had a few final things I wanted to say before sending it along to my amazing webmaster (because webmistress doesn’t sound just right).

So, when I finally climbed into bed late last night, I got out the Macbook to finish it off. Somewhere in the process of typing out that final paragraph, my thoughts turned to mush and my fingers wandered over the keyboard. My body gave a jump and I realized I had gone to sleep editing this document. I laid the computer aside and did not know I was in the world any more until my phone alarm signaled me it was time to get ready for worship this morning. So, tonight, I finally had the free moment to get back to it. The trouble is, it is gone. All that is left of my fantastic post is one little lowercase “v” in the upper left corner of the document. I think it stands for “vacuous” which means “having no content.” Try as I might, I cannot recover it. I’ve looked in the trash, I’ve  clicked “undo typing” and I’ve searched “recent documents.”   From the black hole of cyberspace it will haunt my memory. Makes me wish for the days when we wrote our thoughts with a pen in a notebook. But then I wouldn’t be writing a blog.

Since I now need a new post, it occurs to me that lots of our best efforts get lost when we, as God’s women fail to get the rest we need. I think the devil loves for us to become sleep deprived. He can get us to be cross with our husbands when we’ve lost sleep. He can get us to become resentful of the requirements of Christianity, if he can make us sleepy. He knows that a few hours of lost sleep can result in many hours of negativity and a defeatist attitude. Stolen bedtime dreams can ultimately rob us of the real aspirations that comprise our eternal hopes. In worst-case scenarios, our children can suffer from our inability to focus on their needs and our husbands can become fearful of our mood swings. I think the devil must especially rejoice if he can combine sleep deprivation with hormonal misalignments with gospel meeting weeks—a deadly combination. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I can recall several times in my child-rearing years when I just became so tired that I felt I could not function and, just at that time, some virus or the chicken pox or strep throat would stop me in my tracks and force me to stay at home with sick children for a few days. While I would have never wished the sickness on them, the time of respite would inevitably occur at a time when I seemed to need it most.

Someone said, “When you snooze, you lose.” That’s right. I lost my document. Someone wiser said, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat (Mark 6:31). According to the Greek here, Jesus was encouraging his apostles to take repose,…to refresh themselves. Are there times when you can barely take time to eat and, even when you do eat, it is anything but leisurely? Beware. Stay in the Word, because you will become vulnerable to attitude diseases.

Over and over in the book of Hebrews, the writer talks of our entrance into heaven as “entering His rest”. God thinks rest is a plus for His people as we become inundated with responsibilities in His service. It’s also a promised eternal blessing for the righteous. It might be my favorite name for heaven. I am excited to “enter His rest.”  It will be a perfect rest…no sleep apnea, no insomnia, no bad dreams, no rude awakenings and certainly no guilt-tortured fitful nights. Perhaps there will be no sleep at all. But it will be a place of rest.

I think since a short space of physical rest for this temple feels so incredibly good, the eternal rest for the soul must defy my imagination– just like every aspect of heaven. I can hardly wait!