For more years than I care to admit, my middle name might as well have been “Tired.” Yet rest seemed an anathema to me. I looked the word “anathema” up in the dictionary and the definition is “the gravest ecclesiastical censure.” Exactly. I felt that my need for rest was just plain unrighteous. How many times have I heard the saying, “No rest for the wicked and the righteous don’t need any.” Well, no matter which category you put me in, I need rest, and the very idea of rest has taken a bad rap in our Mormon culture—and in our society at large.

On every hand, the focus is on activity. We have quite forgotten the quiet rest and rejuvenation that can keep us spiritually sound and make activity truly productive. Consider the reputation of rest in our secular world. What boss ever took kindly to an afternoon nap or a call from an employee saying, “I won’t be coming to work today. I’m exhausted and need to rest.” Only sickness or death of a loved one is considered a valid “excuse” for missing work. Where is our need to rest validated? When, even on the Sabbath, God-ordained for this very purpose, do we find time for rest?

“He Maketh Me to Lie Down in Green Pastures”

I want to tell you how I learned to give rest the respect it deserves. In the spring of 2001, I was in a three-car freeway accident that left me seriously injured, weak, and bedfast. The doctor ordered me to put absolutely no weight on my right leg for three months. I thought I could catch up on all the reading and writing I had been neglecting. However, I was too weak to hold a book or even write a single line on paper. I was exhausted—not just from the stress of the accident, but from many years of over-doing.

With no other option, for the first time in my life I gave myself permission to let go and rest. That enforced rest may have saved my life. I was so depleted, so bone weary that I slept hours on end, at last giving myself over to my body’s need. However, it wasn’t just my body that needed rest; so did my spirit. I finally had time to pray, ponder, sort out my life, and feed my spirit. I listened to the whole Work and the Glory series on tape, as well as many other inspiring things. I learned the meaning of the scripture,  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. . . . He restoreth my soul.” (Psalm 23:2-3, emphasis added ) 

If We Don’t Choose Rest, Circumstances Make Us Rest

Why is it such a common experiences to have to be made to lie down in green pastures?

Author Wayne Muller said, “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath—our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us. In my relationships with people suffering with cancer, AIDS, and other life-threatening illness, I am always struck by the mixture of sadness and relief they experience when illness interrupts their overly busy lives. While each shares their particular fears and sorrows, almost every one confesses some secret gratefulness. “Finally,’ they say, “at last. I can rest.” 1

How had I become so depleted? How had I used up all my reserves and allowed myself to get to such a state? Consider first that I was raised in a home with a mom who never sat down; yet never to my knowledge said, “I’m tired. I need to rest.” My father was known for building our family home evenings and Saturdays around work—almost single-handedly. Both my parents always had responsible Church callings as well; they seemed to always be working.

When I left home, first for college, then a mission, I continued to find encouragement for the “no time to rest” pattern.  Missionaries had one morning and afternoon each week for rest and recreation. In the morning we did laundry, wrote letters, cleaned our quarters and our car, shopped and ran errands. In the afternoon, we had an activity with our district. Never did we rest. In the evening, we were back to missionary work. Our regular daily schedule was nonstop from 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. My mind was often so full of things to do that I didn’t sleep well. I was forced to rest when I got too sick to get out of bed.

Author Wayne Muller said, “Rest is an essential enzyme of life, as necessary as air. Without rest, we cannot sustain the energy needed to have life. We refuse to rest at our peril—and yet in a world where overwork is seen as a professional virtue, many of us feel we can legitimately be stopped only by physical illness or collapse.” 2

Predictably, I was sick many times on my mission. Did I lay there and accept my need to rest? No. I chafed at the limitation, counted the hours till I could get well enough to get out of bed—at which time I would immediately fall into the same pattern. Most of my adult life when I’ve been confined to bed I’ve been like a coiled spring, just waiting for the energy to bounce out of bed and get back in the rat race. I continued to live my life with the idea that righteousness required me to push until I dropped. I’ve pushed hard, but so have I dropped hard.

Even God rested on the 7th day. And Christ, our exemplar frequently took time to rest and to pray.

Muller said, “When we think of Jesus, we usually think of him teaching, healing, or being accosted by hordes of sick or possessed who sought his touch. But Jesus would just as often send people away, or disappear without warning, dismissing those in need with neither excuse nor explanation, and retire to a place of rest.” 3

While more sleep is sometimes for us a dire need, just as often the need is for quiet, for time with the Lord, for spiritual rejuvenation. The right kind of praying is one of our greatest sources of rest. “One translation of the biblical phrase “to pray” is “to come to rest.” And such was the rest of the Lord:

“But so much the more the report went abroad concerning him; and great multitudes gathered to hear and to be healed of their infirmities. But he withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” (Luke 5:15-16

“That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door . . . And in the morning, a great while before the day, he rose and went out to lonely place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:32-33)

Muller said, “Jesus did not wait until everyone had been properly cared for, until all who sought him were healed. He did not ask permission to go, nor did he leave anyone behind, “on call,” or even let his disciples know where he was going. Jesus obeyed a deeper rhythm. When the moment for rest had come, the time for healing was over. He would simply stop, retire to a quite place, and pray.” 4

And so one of our best sources of daily rest is to draw ourselves apart from the world and set aside quiet time for restful prayer. But even prayer cannot be restful if we are living in the Pharisee perfectionism mode, thinking of the Lord as a taskmaster requiring more of us than we have to give. The more fearful we become in the uncertainties of the world’s chaos, the greater our tendency to try to make this “doing” perfectionism model work. But it never will.

 I honestly believe some of us resist coming to the Lord, really giving our lives over to Him, because we think He will work us to death. But the Lord does not say to us, “Come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you a mile-long checklist, the completion of which is necessary in order to earn my approval and love.”

What he does say is, “come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you rest.”  The voice of the Lord to us is a voice of love, of acceptance, of nurture. It is a voice that motivates us to righteous desires. It does open our eyes and hearts to the goodness of all around us and what we personally might do to lift and build. But it does not motivate to Pharisee-like coercion and duty-bound counting of our steps. Coercion has never been in God’s plan--but it is the center of Satan’s. When we are feeling coerced to do more and more and more or to think we can earn our way to heaven by exact obedience we need to stop and pray and sort it out. Jesus clearly rebuked the Pharisees for that kind of life focus and clearly stated that it is our hearts that He wants.

We can say “Enough is enough. I can’t do anymore right now. I have to go and find peace with the Lord. That is what I’m really needing.”

Where is the Lord’s voice really calling us? It is not calling us to run faster than we have strength. It is calling us to step apart and spend time with Him. To lie down in green pastures and have our soul restored. When our body hurts and is crying out with fatigue, the Lord is calling us to rest, to do what feels joyful and restful. We need to restore rest to its rightful position in our life, give it the respect it deserves.

When Jesus says, “Come unto me,” he wants us to come for comfort, for truth and nurture and rest. We turn away from the Lord when we get caught up in the clamor of too much activity, too much noise and chaos and running. The Spirit will not sustain us in living that way. Let’s stop running and come back to Him, choose the better part, the one thing that is needful. As we quietly listen He will give us the guidance to know which of all the options for good activity are His will for us. We can’t do it all, and He doesn’t expect us to. He will help us let go of the rest. We can choose to be a Mary, not a Matha. Come sit at the Lord’s feet, listen to His words, and find rest.