How Can We Rest in A World Where There Is So Much Need?

I admit it’s hard for me to rest in a world that is full of need and full of work that can be done at all hours of the day during every day of the week.

It is hard for me even to think about “good rest” because my mind gets so busy pre-defending this idea against arguments for why more pressing issues should be given higher priority.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Petit, Creative Commons

It can feel frivolous to fret over how to rest well in a first-world reality.

Here’s the question I keep asking myself.

Do I need to ponder what it means to take a break from tasking on the computer when there are people who are hungry on my block or on my planet?

I don’t know the answer.

What I do know is that somehow, rest itself is a discipline, one that works with and not against all of the other disciplines we know are good for us.

It goes without saying that there is worthwhile and necessary work that we could always be doing, and that for the vast majority of the world this conversation itself is a luxury. Even still, it’s becoming clearer to me that something valuable and worthwhile exists in moments of non-accomplishment, and that I would do well to make more room for such moments in my life and my routine.

There are many things resting reminds me.

Resting reminds me that amidst striving (for good causes) and spinning my wheels (for good reasons), there is much that is not mine to do.

Disciplining myself to pause in the middle even of purposeful work forces me to admit that my ability to move and shake and make things happen isn’t finally what makes the world go round.

A healthy and inextricable relationship exists between good work and good rest, but if I turn rest into only the absence of measurable productivity, into empty time that I can afford to skip over to be more efficient—

I cheapen both my doing and my being still.

Instead, I want to see rest as a discipline in its own right, something in which I must participate in order to make an honest assessment of what I am capable of and called to.

In light of those realities, I am released to do fervently and fully all that I can, instead of getting stuck on what I cannot.

Because it reminds me that I’m not in charge of everything around me, rest also helps me remember the real context in which my work takes place: a life, with all its opportunities, relationships, pleasures, and challenges, that has been given, not earned by my skill or strength or cleverness.

I can’t chart on a graph how pursuing and receiving rest correlates to our ability to press forward in the hard work of setting the world to rights in many ways and in many arenas.

I’m arguing with myself over how naive and idealistic it sounds to prioritize such a thing.

But despite my insecurity about how to prove it, my experience tells me that an afternoon canoeing with friends or half an hour sitting on the porch in the evening might just mean something good in the grand or not-as-grand scheme of things.

Parker Palmer says in The Promise of Paradox that tensions and contradictions help us “learn that the power for life comes from God, not from us,” which for now is as tangible a reason as I can pin down for why rest and stillness matter even though it’s also true that we were made to work diligently in the world and make it better.

As I continue trying to un-wrinkle how the disciplines of still and quiet (or even fun) fit into real life, I’m starting to think that true rest might not keep me from my responsibilities and my work, but help me approach it in a humbler (I’m fighting the urge to say more productive) posture.

How Can We Rest in A World Where There Is So Much Need? is a post from: Storyline Blog