"Never underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering"

Warm-up: Jeremiah 17:19-27

"Not bothering"-- I like Pooh's thinking. Would that I, like that wise old bear, could lead a less bothered life.

I read today something Jeremiah said that spoke to my tendency to bother myself with life's burdens: "Don't carry a load on the Sabbath!" he insisted. It's an an odd text to fix on, but it began to set my mind right. Let me explain.

Jeremiah took his stand in the city gates of Jerusalem where he could be heard by all who passed by and proclaimed this message: "This is what the Lord says: `Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. Do not bring a load out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath...'" (Jeremiah 17:21, 22).

It's odd that Jeremiah would stress Sabbath observance when so much was wrong with the city, but it was essential to do so for the Sabbath is at the heart of what ails us all--our tendency to work ourselves to death when God wants to give us rest.

Rest is the oldest institution in the world. It was established in the beginning when God set out to make the world. He worked six days, we're told, and then he took a day off. Then he wrote that day large in Israel's law book and on her calendar. He called the day, "Sabbath," a word that means "to cease from one's labors and rest."

It was Augustine, I think, who first noted that the phrase "there was evening and there was morning" which occurs on each of the first six days of creation is conspicuously absent on the seventh day. The seventh day had a beginning, but it had no end. God's rest goes on forever.

This restful seventh day was a symbolic rule for Israel, but for us today it's a reality--that "spiritual rest, in which believers lay aside their own works to allow God to work for them," as John Calvin said (Institutes viii: 28). Once the Sabbath was one day to rest; now it's an everyday thing (Hebrews 4: 1-10; Colossians 2:16,17).

The Sabbath is not a day; it's a disposition--a mind-set of resting every day, all day for all we have to accomplish, believing that God is at the heart of all our activity. It's an unencumbered, unhurried, relaxed life-style that grows out of a deep awareness that God is on the job twenty-four hours a day whether we are or not.

Solomon said,

"In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat for (God) gives to those he loves while they sleep" (Psalm 127:2).

There's something wonderfully significant about this psalm, something easily missed unless we understand that the Sabbath for Israel began, not on Saturday morning, but on Friday evening at bedtime.

The Hebrew evening and morning sequence says something significant to us: God puts his children to sleep so he can get his work done. "Sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake," said George MacDonald.

In the evening fatigue overtakes us and we have to stop working. We lay ourselves down to sleep and drift off into blessed oblivion for the next six to eight hours, a state in which we are totally non-productive. But nothing essential stops. Though we may leave many things undone and most projects unfinished God is still at work. "He gives to those he loves while they sleep." The next morning his eyes sweep over us and he awakens us to enjoy the benefits of all that he has done.

Most of us, however hit the floor running. We wolf down a Power Bar and dash out the door with a travel mug of coffee clutched in our hand. We have to be up and doing, getting things started and getting a world of things done. That's because we don't yet understand that God has been working for us all along. We have awakened into a world in which everything was started centuries ago. God has been preparing the good works in which we find ourselves walking throughout each day.

F. B. Meyer wrote,

"We must remember to maintain within our hearts the spirit of Sabbath calm and peace, not fussy, not anxious, nor fretful nor impetuous; refraining our feet from our own paths, our hand from our own devices, refusing to make our own joy and do our own works. It is only when we are fully resolved to act thus, allowing God to originate his own plans and to work in us for their accomplishment that we enter into rest."

And what keeps us from entering into God's rest? Unbelief. Underlying all our worry and compulsive self-effort is the thought that God cannot or will not come through. That's why Israel wouldn't lay their burdens down in Jeremiah's day and that's why we can't let up. That's why we have to keep hustling and hoping to do more. That's why we get so weary and worn out. That's why we get so worried. And that's why we need to find rest.

Can we do it? You bet your life we can. We can keep the Sabbath inwardly and carry no burdens through the gates of our minds. God never commands without giving us the means to comply.

Here's what we must do: we must greet anxiety at the door with one short, strong answer--"God." We must say to ourselves, as Abraham said to Isaac in his moment of greatest worry, "God will see to it" (Genesis 22:8). And then we must leave the matter with him. That's how we enter into his rest.

Paul says the same thing: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4: 6,7).

Our wills can direct our thoughts to any object they choose. We can either obsess over our fear, or look away from it and direct our thoughts toward God and his perfect solutions. It's good to think objectively about the issues that distress us, but to fret over them is to deny God's love for us and his ability to save.

Some years ago I was walking a stream bed with my brother-in-law, Ed Wichern, accompanied by his son David, who was then about three years old. David was collecting "piglets," as he called them--round stream rocks that did indeed look like Winnie the Pooh's porcine friend.

The accumulation of rocks soon got to be too much for David who struggled along unable to keep up. "Let me carry your piglets, David," Ed said. "No," David replied firmly, "You carry me and I'll carry my piglets."

I couldn't help but think then and many times since then how David's childish self-reliance rebukes my own more grown-up reluctance to let God take up my burdens. "You carry me," I insist, "but the cares of life are my own." Much better, Peter insists, to cast all our care upon him because he cares about us (1 Peter 5:7).

Rest; rest in Him--
Your work is through.
Lean back on his great power;
He'll work for you.

--John Fischer

DHR

11/21/97