As I write I’ve been thinking on and off all day of how I wanted to write about rest. The scripture I’ve been thinking about for days. But how to express my thoughts I haven’t been sure.
My morning started at 5:30. My best friend texting me with plans for the day. Today has been one of those days where “it takes a village.” Hillary Clinton caught a lot grief for that quote, but she was on to something.
As I rearranged and tried bringing order back to our house today after several weeks of some renovation I chased my best friend’s sixteen month old around. My best friend needed the village of her friends this week. She needed the peace of knowing her children were being cared for and loved. Her seventy-five year old mother fell breaking her hip. Her mother who has suffered from Alzheimers for the past fifteen years.
Rest. Physical rest is necessary. But what about rest for our spirit. How do we calm the anxieties that plague our lives?
My friend needs rest. As I have prayed daily for my friend over the past year there have been many times I have asked God to give her physical rest and strength. Now, more than anything, I pray for her spirit to find rest in the coming days.
Rest for our spirit. Something I crave more and more. Peace. Something Eucharisteo, giving thanks, is teaching me. I read Psalm 139 this past week.
Psalm 139:1-18
You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.
How can I not rest? He knows me. His presence is with me. He knew me before I was formed. He knew every situation I would ever experience. He made me. Fearfully. Wonderfully. He. Made. Me.
He knew my friend would deal with this heartbreaking disease that has stolen most of her mother’s mind. He is “hemming her in behind and before.”
How can we not give thanks for the grace of His knowing?
And in His knowing our spirits can rest. Because He knows us. Because His presence with us.
Rest.