Do you have a “place?” A place where the static and strains of being evaporate into the very air around you... where COVID-19 doesn’t exist for just a moment; the human race isn’t divided by politics, religion, human rights, climate change, poverty...
The world, for a few passages in time, is wholly perfect.
And you can simply “be.”
For me, it’s on top of a Lake Michigan sand dune, feet shoved as deeply into the therapeutically scalding sand as I can manage. It’s by no means a mountain, but I feel like I’m on top of the world, looking out over crystal blue waters studded with a thousand glistening diamonds.
There’s not a sound save for the gentle lull of the waves and soft breeze through the tall, brave grass and the trees; and occasional hum of my daughter digging for “dinosaur bones” in the sand a few feet away.
It’s an exhilarating feeling, to be out in the middle of nowhere. No technology; cell phones are back on the boat since we swam ashore; and they don’t have service anyway. No phone. No watch. No concept of time.
Solace.
Soulful repose.
To just be.
I often think of the Biblical phrase, “on the seventh day, God rested.”
It doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, from several standpoints. Chiefly, God is supremely God and requires no rest. A day of rest for God? Useless, unnecessary, laughable, I could go on.
A second point- the day of rest in Christianity as a Sabbath for worship. This sounds great, right? Okay, but I would argue that a devout Christian should worship and seek God seven out of seven days; not just set aside one Sabbath day and say “here ya go God, have one out of my seven weekdays.”
So where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with sitting on top of a sand dune?
Rest.
Rest is necessary. Rest is healthy, and restorative for soul and spirit.
Read this next sentence twice:
Rest is productive.
“On the seventh day God rested.”
Not because He needed to, but because WE need to— and because He needed to teach us to.
In a society screaming, bombarding from all angles with the message to hustle harder, just keep pushing, you-have-to-get-ahead, our good, good Father is whispering quietly for us to come and take His light hole and find rest for our weary souls. To drink from His fountain that never runs dry.
He’s pointing to the precedent He set at the very dawn of Creation- yes, it is okay to work hard.
But then, REST.
And just be.
It doesn’t have to be on top of a sand dune either (although I certainly encourage it).
And then you may work again; renewed in body, mind, and spirit.
And that work you do? Remember it’s all unto to the One who created it all.