Rest, Meaning, and Ecclesiastes

My pastor recently decided to embark upon a sermon series through Ecclesiastes. I know. What was he thinking? I mean Ecclesiastes is just depressing. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” and so on and so forth. Its most impressive achievement is the astounding number of ways it says, “Life is meaningless.”

So I was sitting in church on Sunday listening to my pastor talk about the meaninglessness of life and considering what I might eat for lunch when he said,

“We use our busyness to compensate for our meaningless lives.”

 

This was the point when I stopped thinking about my lunch.

 

I am obsessed with staying busy. Indeed my life begins to feel very meaningless if I am not busy—if I am not being productive. I recently realized that I even only wear shoes that are easy to put on because it feels like a waste of time to wear other shoes that might take me a full minute to put on. That would clearly not be a productive use of time.

So this statement got me thinking about the past few months and my attempts at resting. I have realized that I am terrible at resting. In fact it stresses me out. There are many reasons for this which are being slowly worked through in therapy (really). But the point is that it’s ridiculous.

The final point of the Sunday sermon was that life is meaningless without God. I agree with this completely on a cognitive level, but when I observe my obsession with staying busy to feel like my life has extreme purpose, it’s clear I don’t agree with it on a practical level. So what I’m trying to say is that resting is really important. But resting is not essential just for emotional health. Rather, perhaps its greater importance is to practically realize our real need for God to make life meaningful—instead of our productivity.

So here’s my top 5 reasons rest is important:

1. Jesus did it. I mean, let’s face it. If the man who had to redeem all of humanity with his life, death, and resurrection, did not feel the need to constantly be productive and busy with people, then I think we can make time too.
2. Rest increases your faith. In the Old Testament, rest was used to describe death (hopeful right?), freedom from enemies, and a sign of the perpetual covenant between God and His people. Resting means that you are not doing things. That means you have to trust that God is faithful to not let everything fall apart. Thus, the Sabbath each week was a practical reminder of this.
3. In the New Testament, rest words refer to spiritual refreshment. Who doesn’t need to be spiritually refreshed? Imagine the refreshment of a hot shower at the end of the day, a really delicious orange, and a deep night of sleep all wrapped up into one on a spiritual level. That’s what rest is supposed to do for us.
4. Rest creates room for compassion. In the craziness of last year, I realized that I was so stressed that it was nearly impossible for me to actually care for other people. Resting makes us open to seeing other people’s needs and maybe even helps us to meet them because it puts the necessity of our busyness into perspective.
5. Witness to outsiders. Next time you read the New Testament, note that most of Paul’s instructions for Christian behavior are for the sake of those outside of the church. How does resting witness to outsiders? Thank you for asking. I have three responses:

• Rest is what we will do for eternity. Not sitting around Netflix binging kind of rest, but completely fulfilled by the Lord and living on perfected earth so we don’t have any worries kind of rest. Thus, resting now, in this imperfect world, shows our confidence in eternity and brings the Kingdom of God a little closer.
• As previously stated, you have trust to God to rest. Otherwise resting will stress you out.
• Resting shows that you find meaning in a relationship with God, not in creating your own sense of security through working nonstop, being the best, having a lot of money, or whatever. This is completely countercultural.

 

How does one rest well? Still working on that. Still working on relaxing and not finding my worth in my productivity. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Just Walkin’ Around the Garden

So I am working my way through Genesis right now. Very slowly at times. Recently, I made my way to this really adorable café by this equally whimsical park near my new home. And amidst the groups of 20-somethings in their matching start-up company t-shirts, I found myself sitting and dwelling on Genesis 3:8.

 

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

 

Has anybody taken a moment to consider how incredibly bizarre this picture is? We have here two very opposing pictures.

 

On one end (of the sentence), God is walking in the garden in the cool of the day. This is a very beautiful sentence in Hebrew (gotta make use of my Logos). Unfortunately I am not nearly confident enough in my Hebrew skills (after a year of neglect) to explain things about it, so if you don’t read Hebrew (I’m estimating a fair 97.5% of people who might have read this far), just trust me that it is a beautiful sentence that has echoes from the creation account and the personal nature of God.

 

So anyway, we have this beautiful picture of the very good creation as it should be—with the LORD God walking around in it with the people He’s made.

 

And then we have the other end (of the sentence). The people go and hide among the trees of the garden. Now let’s take a second to understand the absurdity of this.

1. God is WALKING. So in theory, they could have gone and walked around this incredible paradise with God. I mean, it would be SO MUCH EASIER to “follow God” if he were out for a walk. Following God could be as easy as following a car, a trend, or someone on twitter.
2. They are HIDING. Now this is straight up confusing.

• You can’t hide from God. Adam and Eve were pretty new to the whole being people thing, but I would hope that they would have grasped that.
• God has given them no reason to be afraid of Him. Sure, He warned them about the tree. So they should have been afraid of the tree, not of their creator.
• They go the opposite direction. Like I said, I think it would be a luxury if I could just literally go walk around with God. And yet, they go the opposite direction of this luxury. It’s like walking away from the dessert table. Just plain nonsensical.

 

Following the previous observations, I will avail you with my real-life applications. Try to contain your excitement.

 

1. I’d like to think that I would not do the completely non-sensical act of running from God, when I could be walking beside Him, but we all know that is not the way of it. I want to hide from Him far more often than I care to admit. Maybe because I’m bored, tired, frustrated, or even content.

 

2. The picture at the end of time at Christ’s return is of a bride and groom. Consider that picture of the complete reversal of this story from the beginning of time. A bride walks toward her groom in excited anticipation of them being joined together. We are supposed to represent this eschatological Kingdom of God as much as we can in the present age. So let’s work on reversing the picture in our own lives, in our small groups, and in our churches to being people who excitedly walk toward God instead of hide from Him.

 

3. They were hiding because of their sin. Their sin was LITERALLY separating them from God. And it’s really sad because Adam and Eve’s identity would have completely rested in God and who He wanted them to be. He was their creator after all. And so by hiding from Him, they not only forsook their relationships with Him, but also compromised the very core of their identity—their humanity. Hiding from God ultimately led (and leads) to a complete misunderstanding of what it truly means to be human.

 

4. If God knows our sins, why do we still try to hide them? I find myself doing this a lot. If I’m feeling lazy or know I’m doing something I should not, I avoid my time with God. And in that way, sin really gets the upper hand because I isolate myself from the only One who can make me better.

 

God offers us many opportunities to walk with Him. Let’s try not to make up lame excuses to not take Him up on the offer.

On Feeling Needy

For the last month I have been contemplating Matthew 8:20

Jesus said to them, “Foxes have dens to live in and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

I feel I’ve really walked as Jesus walked… because for the last month, I have been jealous of the foxes with their fancy little HGTV homes.

And for the last month, in an effort to follow Jesus (literally), I have been trying to move into the city. There were weeks when I only knew where I was going to sleep a couple nights at a time. But things worked out, and I am happy to say that I now have an actual residence. Basically that means that my stuff and my body stay in the same place. And I have realized what a blessing that really is.

 

But for now, I’d like to provide you with same basic insights I gained during my month of couch surfing/squatting/homelessness.

 

1. When you don’t know where you are going to sleep, it’s really hard to care about other people. Somebody would complain about needing to write a paper or something else higher on Maslow’s hierarchy, and I would just think about the fact that I hadn’t showered in a few days and I wasn’t sure if I had remembered to pack my deodorant.

 2. I hate being needy. HATE IT. And yet, that doesn’t deter me from needing people whether I have a home or not. It’s really annoying how that works. We can often get away with pretending to not have emotional or spiritual needs that involve other people, but it’s hard to hide not having a place to sleep. And I am not so desperate to prove myself self-sufficient as to sleep outside. So I had to ask lots of different people if I could sleep at their houses. And I couldn’t escape thinking about how I would make them have more laundry and inevitably eat their food. But people didn’t seem to really mind. And as the body of Christ, sometimes I think it is easier to help people than to need people. So I would like to thank all the people who helped me last month. You have not gone unnoticed, even if you haven’t gotten a thank you card. It might have gotten lost in the mail.

 3. Stuff is a luxury. I walk this shaky line between hating to own and move lots of things, but also enjoying having a Q Tip, or scissors, or a hair tie, or some watercolors when I need them (because being stuck without water colors can put you in a real bind sometimes). But in the last month, I saw that it is possible to live out of a duffel bag. I started to just wear the same five outfits because it was simpler than digging through my stuff in another location simply for variety. So for those of you who saw me every Monday during that month, I apologize that you only were able to enjoy one piece of my exquisite wardrobe.

 

So there it is. Being homeless is not my favorite experience I have had. But I think it was still worthwhile. In short, it has been good for me to learn to be a little needy and the many lessons that come along with that.