Throughout my work life, I’ve taken satisfaction in my ability to get things done. I’m one of those who use a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly “to-do” list. I want to create the long-term strategic plan, annualize it, and work on it so we can measure progress. I like the accountability that comes with accomplishing many things.
We are busy people who have a robust work ethic as a culture. Our world and our society have benefited greatly from this culture. And yet, I have recently seen that we don’t rest as well as we work. A report from Money magazine says that Americans work hundreds more hours per year than Europeans. We stay so busy with work that we often forget the power of rest. Corrie Ten Boom once said that “If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” For reasons I’ll discuss below, the fact is that the devil is working overtime and having his way among us.
This week, I had the pleasure of listening to Alan Fadling speak. Fadling wrote “An Unhurried Leader,” a book that had a profound impact on my life several years ago. Fadling noted that God established His intended cycle of rest and work in creation. God created both rest and work. He created and intended humans for work, to steward and care for the earth, and to find joy in that work. But he also created rest and ordained it from the beginning. God created men and women on the sixth day. The first full day after their creation was the seventh day, the Sabbath, a day of rest. The order of creation, demonstrated by God from the beginning, is that we’re supposed to work from a place of rest, not rest from work. That’s a vital distinction.
We often mix this up, treating rest as a reward for work rather than as the fuel or lifeblood that makes work good. Because we don’t prioritize rest, we tend to deemphasize or avoid it altogether, often working until all the work is done. And, all the work is never, ever done. When we finally get exhausted, we’re too worn out to rest, because, ironically, effective rest requires effort and intentionality. When we’re exhausted, we often simply numb ourselves instead of resting, like drinking too much, binging on TV, or overeating. When we’re numb, we don’t feel tired for a little while, but we emerge from numbness feeling even worse.
As a people, we are overworked and underrested.
There’s a terrible cost associated with overwork and underrest. Take a minute and think of the states of mind you associate with being restless and weary. Words that come to mind probably include “emotional, short, irritable, drained, unhealthy, frazzled, scattered, reactive, and selfish,” and maybe several others. When we think of words associated with being rested and refreshed, we might conjure up ideas like “peaceful, generous, proactive, creative, hopeful, focused, content, reflective, and joyful.”
Now, consider which of these states of mind and body produces the best work? Considering restlessness and rest this way demonstrates the power and intentionality of God in creating us to work from a place of rest. He knows that we can do our best work, work that glorifies Him—when we operate the way He created us. Because the devil wants to undermine that work, he tries to keep us in the state Ten Boom mentioned—busy, operating frenetically, without rest, doing our work from the frazzled state we talked about above. He knows we’re less effective, maybe completely ineffective for God’s Kingdom, when we’re overworked and underrested.
God sent Jesus to earth, not only to die for our sins, but to teach us how to live, to show us a better way. Jesus purposefully limited much of His omnipotence, living completely by the power of the Holy Spirit, to show us that there’s an incredibly healthy, effective, joyful way to live, even for the “man of sorrows,” a way that’s possible for us. Jesus taught us to lead a slower-paced life, operating from a state of rest—a life that moved at the speed of relationships.
So many times, I enter into conversations and interactions with people while going about my day, working through my to-do list, and feeling like I’m accomplishing something. In many cases, the people I encounter are divine appointments of the day, representing God’s unscheduled intent for me. However, if I’m honest and not careful, I find myself distracted during those conversations, thinking about my to-do list, wondering how long the conversation will last, and strategizing how to solve the other person’s problem quickly so I can return to crossing items off my list and getting things done.
But lately, I’ve been pondering the life of Jesus and his ministry. “Getting things done,” the way I think about it, never really seemed that important to Jesus. This might sound a little irreverent at first, but other than the obvious accomplishment of dying on the cross, saving us, and restoring our relationship with God, what were Jesus’s major achievements? If you were to compile a Wikipedia entry or resume for Jesus, what would you include as His key bullet points? When you think about it, there aren’t that many things. He didn’t have many accomplishments in the sense of what we often think our resume will look like at the end of our lives.
But Jesus transformed the world, changing it irrevocably and in literally earth-shattering ways, more so than any other human being before him or since. And Jesus had this profound impact, not through an insanely long to-do list, but through relationships with others, and through hundreds of deep interactions. These relationships took time, attention, and intentionality. I believe Jesus was empowered to impact the world in this way because He operated from a clarity and focus that came from being well rested.
Jesus spent weeks and days in the wilderness during the three years of His ministry, alone with the Lord. He practiced God’s presence, praying and communing with God, and simply enjoying His Father’s presence. In God’s presence, His Father revealed to Jesus that He was God’s beloved and gave Jesus the stillness of spirit and clarity of purpose so that He could be on mission, aligned with the Lord. He showed Jesus what was truly important, so that Jesus’s work was always His best work, always the most life-giving, impactful work He could do. Don’t we all want that?
I wonder how much of my to-do list is influenced by my concern for the opinions of my board, fellow head-of-school peers, leadership team, or you regarding my job performance, rather than focusing on what God thinks. Is that true for you, too? How much of your daily agenda and the frenzied, restless work you do is, at least in part, to make someone other than God think you’re good enough? If I spent more time at rest, sitting at the feet of Jesus and enjoying His presence, would being His beloved become even more important in my life, more important than everyone else? And would it motivate me to do the really impactful work, to build my day around pouring into other people’s lives and promoting their flourishing physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? How much more intentional, thoughtful, creative, and loving would I be?
I don’t think we’ll ever do our best work until we begin engaging in those patterns of rest that God created for us to enjoy and to work from. We often think Sabbath every week is a requirement or a command, but it’s really an invitation—an invitation to step away from our work and to enjoy our family or friends and our God and to rest from the belief that we are the axis upon which the galaxy turns. Maybe it involves setting aside a day, a month, or a quarter to get away from the office and family and pray, spending time alone with the Lord, and asking Him for His vision for your family and the work He’s given you to do, in addition to just enjoying being with Him and in His presence. And, certainly, it’s about being still with Him every day, letting Him calm and still your heart and reveal His love for you.
Each one of these patterns of rest is an act of trust and faith—do we really believe that God will give us the time we need to do all of the work He’s given us to do? And yet, He’s the giver of work and the giver of rest. He created it, so who could or should we trust more to redeem all of it?
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