Rest

One thing I most need right now is rest.  You see I'm still suffering jet-lag from our trip back from Africa.  The lack of sleep, the need for rest is like hunger...it captures all your attention and screams, "I NEED SLEEP!"

Rest.  What a great word that is.  We were made to need it, to enjoy it, but few of us really experience it.  When I say that I don't mean rest for the body.  Often we can achieve that and wake refreshed.  

What I'm speaking of is the rest of soul, the rest of desire, of passion, longing...a rest from self criticism, a rest of contentment.  Few, if any, find a place of rest where the weary soul can truly find peace...peace with itself.  

For me it comes in waves in the night when I most need rest for the soul and body.  Waves of inadequacy, waves of failure, a splash of regret, a drenching of wishful thinking....I wish I could have,  I wish I would have...and rest is gone, and I'm soaking in mental, spiritual and emotional exhaustion.

Oh for a place where I can rest and be 'ok' with me, with where I'm at, with what I have, with who I am.  What I'm describing is truly the struggle of everyone of us.  We all suffer from a soul insomnia, a lack of rest in who we are, what we have achieved or haven't achieved.

Oh for a way to find a rest of soul. A rest from trying, from being, from feeling like we aren't enough.  There is a place like that...it's a place that finds us in the presence of the very one who made us and offers the rest we need.

You see he knows we are broken, wounded, never happy, never content, never at rest....because all of those things can only be found in HIM.  He is the key that unlocks the puzzles we are.  Without him we find ourselves on an endless quest for rest of soul...never finding it.

But when we finally weary, give up and admit, "I can't do this! I'm so tired, please help me."  We finally come to the rest we so desperately need and want.

"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;  for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.  Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest..."  Hebrews 4

It available and it's in his presence.  The author of Hebrews describes the acquisition of this rest as we come to the one who made us, the only one who can give it.  If you are weary, tired of soul, come to him.  Rest is available, rest is waiting...he freely gives it to anyone who asks.