Resting well is a challenge for me and many people I know. Here’s how I see it:

I think there’s at least two important parts to resting: disconnecting from work and reconnecting with God.

Disconnecting can be especially difficult when we love our responsibilities. It’s a blessing to be passionate about our work, but the excitement can lead us to to forget that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

Disconnecting from work is also difficult when we place too much of our identity into what we do. When we become nothing more than the sum of our achievements, we can’t stop achieving or we (think) we’ll lose our value.

Resting well also means reconnecting to God in a way that’s different than when we’re connected to God while we’re working. We ought to worship when we’re working and when we’re resting. Reconnecting with God is a challenge when we love ourselves too much…it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that once we’ve stepped away from our work, we now have some “me time” and we can do whatever we want. It’s a myth to believe, “as long as I’m not working, I’m resting.” We settle for less when we seek diversions from work, escaping isn’t resting.

Without rest, we’ll rust from the inside out. Something on the inside begins to corrode. It turns ugly and twisted and weak.

For me personally, when I fail to rest, my rust on the inside is a withering patience cased by a narrowing perspective. I imagine that each person’s “rust” is a little different, but for all of us, we become less than who we ought to be. We were made to regularly disconnect from our work and reconnect to worship God.

What does your life look like right now? Rested or rusting?