Peace and Rest

This Lent, my home church is doing a sermon series on "Decisive Moments in the Life of Christ," which began last Sunday with "Birth" and used the text for the Annunciation. Therefore, this week's poem, which was written during Advent 2010, serves as a nod to my favorite fellowship as well as a reminder of what should be the spirit of Lent--slowing down a bit and giving God time to speak to us.

Though sometimes I wish it, few of us have the option of going into the wilderness for forty days as Jesus did. But we can declare a "wilderness time" of sorts in our daily life. I recently read an article, "A Desert Time or a Dry Season?," that cast beautiful light on what a Christian's "desert time" should be--not the desolation and deprivation most of us picture, but "a time of refreshing, a quiet season, a time that I came to know the still small voice of the Lord, and to recognize His voice from the voice of man and my own voice." If we can't get away physically from our ordinary lives, we at least can make a special effort to put aside most of the nonessentials, to cry out to God from the depths of our hearts, to seek out that special and sacred "prayer place" that may be waiting quietly to be discovered within easy walking distance. We can take extra prayer time for the express purpose of asking God to teach us to thirst for His Word and His presence above all material concerns.

As many a Southwesterner will testify, the desert can be a place of beauty as well as of mystery, awe, and--perhaps most important of all--peace and silence. It is in the wilderness that we find God's rest.

Life moves at a frantic pace,
Everything a speeding race;
Pounding hearts fill every chest:
Where can we find peace and rest?

In the world of Roman days,
Life, as now, had fretful ways:
Few did let their strivings cease
When the angels sang of peace.

Christ was born to bring us love,
Flowing pure from Heaven above:
Wise men traveling pathways west
Saw in Him true peace and rest.

From the Manger to the Cross,
Christ walked earth to seek the lost.
Now, as then, the eye that sees
Knows He is our Rest and Peace.

O, God of Love and Purest Grace

In many ways, material blessings are a spiritual disadvantage; it's easier to "long for the better country" of Heaven (cf. Heb. 11:13-16) when earth has little to offer. The person who has everything he needs in terms of health, family, money, and possessions may find himself in the position of the "rich young ruler" of Mt. 19:16-22--desperately wanting the riches of eternal life but clinging with even greater desperation to the riches of this life.

Had the ruler looked at what he would gain rather than at what he would be giving up, his decision might have been different. Likewise with us: too many Christians never advance beyond the lukewarm stage of commitment because they keep getting stalled by visions of what they have to lose. And forgetting that the day will come when they have to give it up anyway. When our works are tested by fire on the Day of Judgment (1 Cor. 3:11-15), there is going to be a lot of embarrassed squirming among believers who lived for worldly success and left themselves with nothing eternal to show for it.  

With that in mind, I encourage you to read today's poem as a prayer for Heavenly vision.

O, God of Love and purest Grace,

Who saves the soul from sin,

Guide us through all our earthly days;

Provide Your strength within.

O, God of Power and endless Might,

Whom none can ever thwart,

Fill us with will to choose the right,

That we may not fall short.

O, God of Joy and Source of Song,

Great Maker of all things,

Lift up our hearts our whole lives long,

As all Creation sings.

O, God of Peace and Source of Rest,

Come, guard Your children’s ways;

Convince our hearts Your way is best,

And help us sing Your praise.

O, God of Hope and Lord of Time,

Who brought the world to be,

Come, be our Strength, and we will shine
Through all eternity.

***
Katherine Swarts's poetry book Where Light Dawns, based on this blog, is now for sale at $10/copy. Send inquiries to kswarts@ix.netcom.com, or, if you're in Houston on November 6, look for Katherine's booth at the Grace Presbyterian arts and crafts fair.

Step Aside a Little While

Finally, the hectic schedule I've been on since May is showing signs of slowing. At least for a few weeks. I don't hold any delusions that I'll be able to move permanently into a twenty-hours-a-week, eight-months-a-year work schedule any time soon--nor would it be wise to seriously hope for that, considering the Biblical injunctions against laziness and the fact that when I was in elementary school, it took somewhere around ten weeks to get totally bored with summer vacation.

Nonetheless, we all need our time off. Even those who love their careers to the point of bounding eagerly out of bed on Monday mornings have times when they want to forget they ever heard of work. Four seventy-hour weeks in a row, fifteen clients simultaneously deciding they need rush jobs on eighteen hours' notice, or ten straight work days where Murphy's Law seems to have become a coworker could burn anyone out. As often as not, it's not the actual work that causes the stress so much as the constant reminders of everything else that has to be done after the work of the moment is finished. If you're anything like me, those reminders don't need the physical interruptions of an incoming e-mail or ringing phone; your multi-tasking brain comes with a special "don't forget this or that" beeper that goes off every five minutes. It's not enough to avoid worrying about tomorrow (cf. Mt. 6:34); things quickly get to the point where one's sanity is tested by thinking half an hour ahead!

One reason many of us have so much trouble relaxing on our time "off" is that we let this high-tension mentality permeate our brains to the point we never really leave our work behind. I don't mean just that we physically carry work with us everywhere, or urge the office to call us for every loosely defined emergency; the worst part is the "baggage" we carry in our minds. We think constantly about what we'll do next week back at the office; we worry about the work that's piling up in our absence; we turn every casual conversation into a discussion of our career plans. Or we just transfer the most stressful of our work habits to our leisure time: we try to squeeze in all the activities we can, we feel guilty about relaxing, and we fume and fuss when things go wrong. Patricia Fry's article, "Your Vacation for Body, Mind, and Spirit," offers an interesting take on how our minds often stay in high gear even during vacation--and on what to do about it.

The best approach, of course, is the Biblical one of focusing our full attention on God. Most commentators agree that the Mosaic commands to take days, weeks, and years off from work (e.g., Ex. 20:8-11; 23:14-16; Lev. 25:1-7), while they certainly included the concepts of straight rest and of play, had a strong "spend more time getting to know your God" element. The Hebrew phrase translated "be still" in Ps. 46:10, which is paired with that idea of knowing God, carries the sense of total relaxation, even surrender--the implication being that we must stop struggling with worldly cares before we can fully savor God for everything He is.

God does command time off partly because He cares about our physical and emotional health. But even more than that, He wants to give us a lasting closeness to Himself that can only be nurtured through regular time away from everyday bustle.

In this world of rush and noise,
Filled with glittering, gaudy toys,
Where the strivings never cease,
How can anyone know peace?
Step aside a little while,
Pause to seek the Father's smile;
Turn to Him a willing ear:
Listen now His voice to hear.

In this world where deadlines loom,
Crowding out each second's room,
"Hurry, hurry" is the rule;
All this rush can be so cruel.
Step aside a little while,
Pause to seek the Father's smile;
He commanded Sabbath rest,
He Who knows which path is best.

In this world of endless strain,
Driven by the lust for gain,
And the siren song of greed,
What is it we really need?
Step aside a little while,
Pause to seek the Father's smile;
Let your worries on Him fall:
He will be your All in All.

The Day of Perfect Rest

As those of you who read last week's blog may have gathered, May was an extremely stressful month for me. Not all the stress was from negative happenings--a good bit came from an overdose of new work assignments and possibilities--but even "good stress" takes its toll on the mind and body. Yet many people seem convinced that stress is 100 percent beneficial. Tell professional contacts you've been really busy, and they respond, "That's great!" without even asking what exactly you're doing or whether it's been hard on you. Tell the average hardworking U. S. citizen you might seriously consider a full month's vacation (which is still considered normal in parts of Europe), and you get a disbelieving "how can anyone be so lazy?" look. A Google search for the phrase "rest is a four-letter word" turned up more than 250 results. Most of them decrying the attitude, as do quite a few voices in the wilderness these days, but they seem to have little overall effect on the idea that working ourselves to death is a virtue.

To be fair, the Bible commands periodic rest and condemns laziness. Human judgment is as flawed here as anywhere else, so left to ourselves we quickly slide to one extreme or the other. Even carefully measuring the ideal balance between work and rest, and setting our schedules accordingly, doesn't always help: we play with Web surfing and idle chatter during our "work" time; we allow striving and fretting to interfere with our "leisure" time; and we grumble when "worship" time doesn't begin and end precisely on schedule. Even if such fleshly attitudes are under control, the world and the devil can still invade our rest time with interruptions and unpleasant circumstances. We may wonder why God doesn't always reward our best intentions by protecting us from such things.

While there's no easy answer to that question, we have to remember that the perfect life, where work and rest are always in balance, will come only after we leave this world--and that getting too close to peace and happiness here is often the first step toward spiritual backsliding. The more any earthly thing seems to satisfy all our needs, the greater is the danger of turning that thing into an emotional idol.

Our restless moments here can actually be God's most effective tools for keeping our eyes looking toward the world to come.

We have in this lifetime our trials and troubles,
We have in this lifetime temptation and test,
We have in this lifetime our strivings and struggles,
Till the day of perfect rest.

The Lord gave us nighttime for sleeping and slumber,
And each week the Sabbath, the day that He blessed;
But even in such can come cares in large number,
Till the day of perfect rest.

Among all the weight of a lifetime's distractions,
Among all the hard times that on us can press,
The best that we have is faint hints and small fractions
Of the day of perfect rest.

Oh, heart! cease your strivings and look to your Master,
The One Who has promised relief in distress:
Your true, perfect freedom draws near ever faster,
In the day of perfect rest.

Oh, Lord! for Your day of revealing we're yearning,
That day when You finally will bring all Your best,
Where peace will be endless and pain unreturning:
Come, and bring Your perfect rest!

The Search for Peace

One of the most famous "end times" sermons is the one preached by Jesus and recorded in Matthew 24 (also Mark 13). If its words, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars... Nation will rise against nation" (Mt. 24:6-7), sound like something you might hear on CNN today, that only proves that not much has changed in two thousand years. "Wars and rumors of wars" filled the newspapers thirty, forty, and a hundred years ago; "nation rose against nation" long before the World Wars of the twentieth century; and many a medieval or Roman peasant lived most of his life knowing that he might be called to battle any day. While we tend to think of the "end times" as encompassing only the last few years before Christ's return to earth, most of this passage could easily apply to the whole period of time from His earthly ministry to the present--not to mention to most of history before the Christian era, and presumably to however many years or centuries remain until Christ's actual return.

War is only the largest-scale manifestation of the violent tendencies in every person. Idealists frequently blame war on corrupt government, but power doesn't really corrupt so much as it fertilizes already-existing corrupt tendencies. For every Hitler there are a thousand people who might well do as much damage if placed at the head of a major nation. Whenever we harbor secret bigotries, blame others for our problems, or wish bad luck on anyone who seems to be standing between us and what we want, we are nurturing hatred within ourselves--a hatred that, if left unchecked, may well eventually manifest itself in physical violence or at least in open sympathy with those who commit it. (Remember the civil-rights era, when many an officer of the law beat an unarmed, peaceful demonstrator until blood flowed--and many a presumably respectable, law-abiding citizen stood by, cheering on the violence?)

Nearly everyone who participates in such violence believes that "once we get rid of these troublemakers, we'll have peace." But even if we manage to crush our "enemies" beyond recovery, we soon find that we still feel anything but peaceful. The natural tendency then is to start looking for someone new to blame, instead of doing what we should have done in the first place--admitting that the real problem is with us, our pride and selfishness and insistence on always having our way. It doesn't always manifest itself in violence against others. Many people who wouldn't have the heart to kick a stray dog commit serious violence against their own physical and emotional health, with their constant worrying that something will "go wrong" and their fretting and fuming when it does. These are usually the people who moan, "I just can't find peace of mind!"

The reason most of us can't find peace is that we're looking for it in physical circumstances. The Bible is clear on where real peace is found:

"...the fruit of the Spirit is... peace" (Gal. 5:22).

"[Christ] himself is our peace" (Eph. 2:14).

The world is ugly and violent,
With nations all fighting each other,
And we cry for peace
And for wars to cease
And a day where each man is our brother.

Our lives fill with "wars" of our making,
With quarrel and squabbling and brawl,
And for "peace" we plead--
Whining, "Lord, I need
For my way to be followed by all!"

Our souls churn with battle within us,
Against our own hate-feeding lust,
And we often fail,
When the fights assail,
To seek help from the One we can trust.

Yes, around and within is violence,
But our Lord is the Way of Peace:
When we turn to Him,
We find joys that brim
And pure blessings that never decrease!

True Rest for Souls

The past November-to-February has treated Houston to some of the most erratic and frequent temperature changes I can remember; we've hardly had four straight days within that time period which were all within ten Fahrenheit degrees of each other. Small wonder, with our bodies exposed to such constant adjustments and readjustments, that there seem to be more viruses than usual going around. I'm fighting a less-than-triumphant battle right now against my third illness of the season--or maybe, considering how long it seems to be dragging on, this is a fourth virus that came on the tail of the third.

Illness is a curse to the "mature" adult. When we were children, being sick had certain compensations: we didn't have to go to school; we didn't have to do chores; we got constant pampering; and even after we felt better, we frequently had an extra day off to make sure we were completely recovered. Not so after we're grown up; once we have "real" jobs, the principle changes from "Better safe than sorry" to "If you're strong enough to get out of bed, you're strong enough to do a full day's work." Well, what seems logical in theory doesn't always pan out in practice, as I found out last week when I literally collapsed (luckily into bed and not to the floor) after forcing my coughing, fatigued, nauseated body through a day of business-as-usual. After that, I gave up the fight and spent most (most) of the next few days resting.

General acceptance of working when sick is probably just one more manifestation of American workaholism. Taking an extra day off is considered lazy and shameful; sneaking a nap at lunch hour is looked on with extreme suspicion. Never mind that six-week vacations are the norm in many countries with high GNPs and that scientific research has found that people who rest frequently actually accomplish more; our society sees value only in constant movement. Someone even wrote a book called When I Relax I Feel Guilty.

I suspect, though, that what really kills most workaholics isn't the busyness of their bodies so much as the busyness of their minds and emotions--not their work loads per se so much as the tendency to be constantly thinking about everything that still needs to be done. I've been there--to a large extent I'm still there. Have you ever started a day with your body too weak to rise from bed but your mind screaming like an insane drill sergeant, "You must get up and work--you must finish the To Do list you've already made--you made commitments--you need money!"? It's not something I'd wish on anyone.

Forcing the body to rest is relatively easy compared to trying to force the mind to rest. No doubt the latter constituted a good bit of what Jesus had in mind when He said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Mt. 11:28-30, NIV, emphasis added).

How often do we say, "I'd give anything for a little peace of mind"? Usually the one thing we need to give is the one thing we're refusing to give; we think the answer is getting our lives under control, when in fact we need to hand control over to the One Whose wisdom is as far above ours as the heavens above the earth (cf. Is. 55:8-9).

Once we get in tune with His mind, it becomes easier to figure out when we need to work and when we need to rest.

True rest for souls is never found
In merely stopping to sit down,
Nor skipping work, nor time away
In a vacation for the day,
Nor even in a week or two
To take a trip and thus renew.

No, to achieve the purest rest
That strengthens us to meet each test
And fortifies for life's hard blows--
The only soul that truly knows
A peace within for every day,
Is that which ever seeks God's way.

True peace of mind, which stands its ground
While storms of stress are beating down,
Is fortified through Scripture, prayer,
And through the faith that God is there.
There is no peace in thing or place,
But only in eternal Grace.

Come to the Lord; receive His rest,
Admit His way is always best,
And trade your "should"s which never cease
For His light load of joy and peace:
And He will give His rest to you;
And His own strength will fill you through.

The Great War

People become Christians for different reasons. Some are raised in the church and simply "grow into" personal faith. Some are attracted by the peace and joy they see in Christian acquaintances. Some people come to Christ out of desperation, having found everything else empty.

And some, sadly, convert in the hope that life will become all prosperity and ease. True, there is plenty "in it for us": forgiveness of sins; eternal salvation; increased strength to do right and to meet life's challenges. But the new believer whose primary motive is to see an end to those challenges is a likely candidate to fall away when God fails to "deliver." Often, well-meaning but not particularly well-informed believers are responsible for spreading the idea that "if you have faith, God will heal every illness, solve every financial problem, and remove every frustration." Some Christians are such zealots for this way of thinking that one wonders if they've ever really read the New Testament. How can they overlook the references to discipline, the hardships suffered by the apostles, and such verses as "everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim. 3:12)?

Not all such persecution comes from the unbelieving world. Some comes from the devil (who often trains his guns especially hard on new Christians and others with imminent spiritual-growth potential) and takes the form of illness, professional or financial difficulties, or just one day after another when everything seems to go wrong. Some persecution, sadly, comes from fellow believers: there are Christians who become envious and spiteful when God does great things through others; there are Christians who love church tradition more than God and who consider every new approach heretical; and there are Christians who add to others' suffering with platitudes of "you must have done something to deserve it" and "you obviously don't have enough faith to be healed."

And some of us take the role of our own persecutors. We lampoon ourselves for not growing faster or doing better. We focus on the size of our problems rather than on the size of our God. We add to our miseries by convincing ourselves that nothing ever goes right and God doesn't really care. We refuse to grow in Christ because it seems like too much work.

It is work. God doesn't call us to sign up for the extended vacations of our choice, but to enlist in His army. And it's not a peacetime army where the greatest hardships are running through obstacle courses and cleaning mess halls; good and evil are at active war in this world, and all of us are combat soldiers on hostile foreign territory.

Our Commanding Officer never loses a fight. But that won't do us much good if we go AWOL, refuse to follow orders, or question His battle plan. Strangely enough, the greatest "peace in Christ" goes to His hardest-fighting soldiers.

Fiercer far than any mortal battle ever fought on earth,
Longer far than any war that ever came to humankind,
Is the war fought by each Christian from the moment of rebirth,
The great battle that is centered in the selfish, sinful mind.

More relentless than the fighting waged in any human war,
Most incessant of all battles, never stopping for a rest,
Is the fight of every Christian to subdue all thoughts impure,
On the battlefield of life--the constant ground for Satan's test.

We, mere mortals, are too weak to fight the war without support;
We have nothing we can draw on in the human world alone.
It is God Who works within us; it is He Who builds the fort
And Who forges through His Spirit weapons of a mightier tone.

Through our faith in Christ we find the Strength in which we overcome;
Through our trust in Him we know the Power that brings us sure release.
And one day, all fighting over, we will rest in Heaven's home;
But within the battle, even now, we feel God's perfect peace.

To His Table

This evening Christians celebrate Maundy Thursday. If you already know what "Maundy" means, you deserve a gold egg....

....For the enlightenment of everyone else: The word is etymologically descended from the Latin mandatum, as in Jesus's famous statement at the Last Supper, "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" (John 13:34). Or in the modern English of the NIV, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

Mandate comes from the same root. Loving each other is not a suggestion. Not a "good idea." It's a mandate. A command. An order--an order there is no excuse for not following. "Their habits get on my nerves" is not an excuse. "I can't stand their worship music" is not an excuse. "I was always taught not to associate with/trust their social/ethnic group" is definitely not an excuse. Not even "they/their people treated me/my people badly" is an excuse. Loving as Christ did means to follow His example: to make the first move toward peace (again and again if necessary); and to forgive anyone who asks, without insisting on a "penance period."

Remember, we ourselves have no "right" to sit at Christ's heavenly table. As we are invited only by His grace, only He has the right to choose who else is invited. And He wants everyone there who is willing.

He also wants us to issue all the invitations we can on His behalf. Irrespective of any human differences.

God is calling us all to His table,
From Earth's poles, from the desert sands,
From the cities with all of their bustle,
From the isles and the mountain lands,
From the tundra, from plains that stretch onward,
From the wetlands where floods have spilled;
He gives all His free invitation:
"Come, and eat till your souls are filled."

God is calling us all to His table,
And whatever your shade of skin,
And whatever the home you may come from,
And whatever your past has been,
Though the pain of your life has crushed you
Till you feel that your heart will burst,
He gives you His free invitation:
"Come, and drink here to quench your thirst."

God is calling us all to His table,
And the weak and the strong are here,
Where the wounds of the past end in friendship
And peace drives away pain and fear.
Here the trappings of power mean nothing,
For our Host looks on all in love--
He gives all His free invitation:
"Feast as family on food from above."

Be Still

Amid the chaos of mid-December, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10, NIV) is a piece of Scripture most of us should pay regular attention to. But we also should remember that the emphasis is on the second half.

The whole Psalm makes it clear that the authors were in even more chaotic surroundings than a crowded shopping mall--and were well aware that only through God's power could they find security. Psalm 46 is not about learning relaxation techniques. It is about trusting God at all times, knowing that He is in control.

It is also about letting him be in control. There is no room in God's Kingdom for attitudes of "I trust You to give me inner peace, Lord--but I expect You to deliver it on my own external terms!" We cannot experience true peace until we stop fighting our own little wars for our imagined rights to dictate life's circumstances.

The NASB translates the opening words of Psalm 46:10 as "Stop striving." Stop striving to get on top of things. Stop striving to organize your life. Stop striving to bully the surrounding world into giving you what you want. Surrender all this to God, and He will get things under control for you. And will throw in "peace... which transcends all understanding" (Phil. 4:7).

Even during the chaotic season.

"Be still, and know I Am"--
Hear the Lord's voice;
Will you give Him your ear?
It is your choice:
Will you incline your thoughts
To hear Him speak,
Humble yourself and bow,
Make yourself meek?

"Be still, and know I Am"--
Let striving cease;
Only within His hand
Can we know peace;
Only by pausing now,
Even today,
Can we receive His Word
And know His way.

"Be still, and know I Am"--
Cease from the rush;
Rest from life's frantic pace
For one hour's hush:
When you keep hurrying
As in a race,
Your dreams are crushed beneath
Life's frantic pace.

"Be still, and know I Am"--
God governs all;
Trust Him Who holds you up--
You will not fall:
God alone knows for sure
What you must do;
Be still, trust Him to lead;
He will be true.

A Prayer Away

I took a 24-hour prayer retreat this weekend, so this seems a good time to say something about the significance of prayer. Too often, we treat prayer as a last resort, or as the task to be saved for when "important" things (read: all we can do in our own power) are finished. We fail to truly realize that we are utterly helpless to accomplish anything apart from God (cf. John 15:4-6), or to appreciate the privilege--and the potential--in being allowed direct access to the Power behind the universe.

How much time do you spend in prayer? How does it compare to the amount of time you spend worrying--or the amount of time you spend "doing"?

Do you take seriously Paul's reminder (Phil. 4:6-7) that the only way to find peace is to pray about everything?

Are you overwhelmed with tension?
Does despairing rule your day?
Do not sit in inward churning--
Help is just a prayer away!

Is your heart crushed under sorrow?
Does your world seem bleak and gray?
Are you wracked with pain and anguish?
Seek relief a prayer away!

Is your future dim, uncertain?
Can you scarcely see your way?
It is God Who gives assurance--
Find it just a prayer away!

Does your calling seem a burden?
Do you dread to face the fray?
Do your efforts all seem hopeless?
Strength is just a prayer away!

Do your pleadings seem unheeded?
Doubt you God hears what you say?
Never cease to seek His answer--
It may be a prayer away!

In our joys and in our struggles,
Through each hope and each dismay,
God is waiting to be called on--
He is just a prayer away!