No Rest for the Weary

Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.  He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it…  -  Mark 7:24

Tyre was a town on the coast of Phoenicia.  It was north-west of Jesus’ normal stomping grounds.  From the context of Mark’s gospel this little excursion up north to the coast of the Mediterranean was a break, a get away, a vacation.  Humans were designed for rest from the very beginning.  God rested from his works of creation not as a result of weariness, but for the purpose of delight in what he had made.  Rest, in the biblical sense is not laziness, it is worship. 

Honestly, my day off (Friday for the most part) is filled with non-stop activity.  Weeds and my golf swing both need attending too.  I’m exhausted when Friday evening rolls around.  Part of learning to rest in the Biblical sense means stopping.  It means being still enough to quietly delight in God’s world, in God’s word, in God’s grace, and in God’s presence.  But we live in a manic culture.  Everything has an immediacy of its own.  Rest, true rest, worshipful rest, goes against our every inclination.  Even when we do take rest, it is often void of stillness.  And stillness is where we experience God.  God is the still point in our manic world.  To know Christ, is to walk away from our nets filled with their hundreds of flopping, writhing, attention grabbing  fish to become consumed with the King who calls us to follow him.

Spending a week at the beach in Florida with my wife’s family was a great reminder to me of how poorly it is that I practice true rest.  I went away, had a good time with family and came back tan, but not rested.  I was not still while I was away. 

You see, intimacy with God will always be a struggle.  Adam and Eve took the fruit, they immediately recognized their sin, covered themselves out of shame and hid.  God expelled them from the garden.  Naturally being in God’s presence in the stillness of that perfect garden would never happen again.  We are out of the garden.  We are in the sweatshop of a fallen world.  It will never be easy to steal away and be still.  God had to command “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  It is our inclination to forget Sabbath, to neglect rest, and to hustle away the stillness. 

Knowing Christ means following him to Tyre.  It means refusing to let our own inclinations for maniacal living to keep us from that abiding stillness with our savior who is our only access back to the garden.  The passage in Mark 7 ends this way: “… yet he could not keep his presence a secret.  In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet.”  That rings true doesn’t it!  Sounds about like my vacation.  True worshipful rest will never be easy.  But it will always be good. 

In Christ - Scott Castleman