God of Rest

Well done, good and faithful servant. 

They are the words that we all long to hear, the testimony that we hope God will speak over our lives when we are finished on this earth. 

But...then what? What comes next? With an entire eternity stretched before us, what is there for us beyond that moment? 

Let us not be too quick to want to move on. Because I think that moment holds a whole lot for us. 

You see, in that moment, we will have received the gift that God has for us, a gift that many of us long for but don't think is possible, a gift that we're so quick to want to move past and get onto the rest of the work of living with God in eternity, whatever that looks like. But there in that moment, we get what God has promised first. 

And that's rest. 

Revelation calls blessed those who die in the Lord, for "they will rest from their labor" (14:13). It's the first thing He does for us; our labor is over. 

Not, let's be clear here, our work, for there was work for man even before the fall. But our labor - our toil, our ache, our burden, our bearing. From that, we will have rest. 

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to that day. I'm looking forward to the moment when, after putting my nose to the grindstone for so long and working for so much and putting my effort into everything, including into the life of faith, and juggling the demands of the human world in the human body and the spirit ache that just doesn't go away, then in that moment when I will rest, I'm going to breathe just the biggest sigh of relief and probably melt into a big puddle of human exhaustion. 

Right before I feel that sense of peace that the Lord has promised, I will feel the release of the burden I've been bearing in the flesh. Right before I start dancing and praising, I will get to just stop for a minute...finally stop, for there will be nothing more for me to do...and I will exhale and it will feel like the first time I've ever done that, or at least that I've done that in a long time, and it will be beautiful and glorious. 

Listen, I'm pretty good at work/life balance. I'm pretty good at carving out space for myself and not working too hard, so much that I miss what life is really about anyway. And yet, even here, even on this side of eternity, every time I get a good stop in, every time I get to truly pause for a second, every time I get a season - even a second - of real rest, I feel it in my bones like that. That exhaustion, that exhale...that satisfaction of a job well done. 

We spend our whole lives setting the table, putting everything right, making sure the finest details are tended to, and then that day comes and we finally get to sit down and eat. But that moment, that one little moment, will be the one where we step back, squint one eye just a little bit, look at all we've done, and say...yeah. That's it. 

There is nothing left to do. 

Well done, He will say. Good and faithful servant. 

Now, rest.