Ringtail Cats and Rocking Chairs - Pt 1

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11 ESV).

“I’m busier than a ringtail cat at a rocking chair convention!” Or, at least that’s the colloquialism I have heard often said in an exasperated moment of frustration. It’s usually the result of the feeling we get when we have more to do than we have time to do it. The cry of our age is “busy.” How are you? “Busy.” How’s work? “Busy.” How are the kids doing? “Their lives are so busy. I feel like I’m just a taxi driver.” How was the shopping mall today? “Too busy.” Can you help me? “I’m busy at the moment.” And on goes the chant of our culture. God knew that would be our frustration. In fact, it is a part of the judgment passed on through the Adamic Sin (cf. Genesis 3:17). Because of this knowledge, God provided some guidance to us. In the fourth commandment given to Moses he sets out the principle of Sabbath rest. That’s the reading I’ve selected for today. Man was never created not to work; he was created to work without laboring. Unfortunately most of us haven’t learned the difference. Laboring in life is operating at the fast-paced mode that pushes God to the margins and easily turns into burnout. Yet expectations of keeping up with everything continually escalate. We are all susceptible to the expectation that we are always available, aware of everything that is happening, and capable of achieving anything. Unsurprisingly, this demand to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent places pressure on all of us, whatever our level of social media dexterity. Add some more ingredients like inadequate sleep, poor dietary habits, caffeine addiction, the urge to project our preferred identity, a sedentary lifestyle and we have the perfect recipe for unremitting anxiety and restlessness. The constant hustle and bustle is of our own making, at least to some extent. We would do well to heed the call for how much we try to pack into life. The futile attempt to sustain ourselves by our own efforts is not new. Our digital age simply offers new manifestations of the age-old temptation to usurp God’s role for ourselves. But against this age-old temptation, God offers an age-old response: REST. Jesus invited us to come to him for that rest (cf. Matthew 11:28. In the next few days I hope to lead you to see what a habitual pattern of resting each week might be. It is different in everyone’s life, simply because we are each unique in how we rest. What is the same is the principle of coming to Jesus. That’s the focal point. That’s the core of rest. Today, commit yourself to leaving the rocking chair convention. That’s a lot easier than cutting off your tail!