Rest: The Christian's Prerogative

God is clearly honored when His people rest. But we can wonder: isn't this a secondary matter next to the important work of seeing people otherwise hell-bound, as we once were, rescued through faith in Jesus as their Savior? Can rest wait for heaven?

The answer, surprisingly, is no. Not if we correctly understand the gospel itself.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews (anonymous, parallel with many of the Old Testament books) put matters this way:

"...Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

'So I swore in My wrath,
"They shall not enter My rest,"'

although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: 'And God rested on the seventh day from all His works'; and again in this place: 'They shall not enter My rest.'" (Hebrews 4:1-5)

Earlier the author quoted Psalm 95, in which the objects of wrath are the Israelites who turned back from the Land of Promise despite God's assurances that they would be victorious over apparent obstacles. They are the object lesson of God's word "not being mixed with faith"--their turning back showed their lack of trust in His promises. Faith alone makes the Bible's words truly profitable (though they are beautiful literature in their own right), both now and forever, as it opens up a relationship with the Creator of everything.

Next, the point is made that believing in God's word is entry to His rest. God is resting? Yes; the word choice in Psalm 95:11 there isn't arbitrary. The author backs up to Genesis 2:2, showing that God has finished everything He started in creation.

Do you believe that simple verse--that God is done with His work?

I'm not implying that He isn't active in the world. But He isn't laboring for anything now. When Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished [paid in full]," He wasn't kidding. In an eternal sense, the Lord's work is done, and the gospel--Christ the Creator voluntarily taking the place of sinful rebels who deserved death, paying in full their debt of punishment before God the Father on the cross--brings this idea of rest from creation into completion of His eternal plan of rescue.

So God is at rest, and trusting Him through Jesus means in some sense that we "enter that rest."

"Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, again He designates a certain day, saying in David, 'Today,' after such a long time, as it has been said:

'Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.'

"For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience." (Hebrews 4:6-11)

The author points out that when David wrote Psalm 95, sitting in the land of Canaan from which those faithless Israelites fled (leaving Joshua's generation that victory), he chose the present tense under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God through David was speaking of a rest greater than the one which Joshua accomplished in entering the Promised Land, a rest which Canaan itself foreshadowed.

If you haven't read Hebrews in full, I highly recommend taking an hour or two to do so--no need to rush. A recurring theme, seen in the phrase "remains therefore a rest," is that the promises of God are fulfilled in Jesus in a superior fashion to the lesser fulfillments of the old covenant under Moses.

This rest which is better than Joshua's means that the believer "has ceased from his work" like God. This is only possible through faith in Jesus, Who alone truly obeyed the Father while on earth. Our attempts at making ourselves impressive to God are lethally flawed--His loyalty never faltered, though we can see it tested to the uttermost in Gethsemane and upon the cross-wood.

Let us cease striving and, by faith in the completed work of Christ, be grateful to God. For from now on, anything He gives us the heart, strength and mind to do for Him is the overflow of His love for us, not the cause of it. We need not earn His approval--we labor from it. Resting at least once a week is a tangible reminder that none of our earthly efforts are ultimately required for salvation or anything else--only the free grace and provision of our heavenly Father.

That's an attitude which the world cannot produce or mimic. Walk in this freedom with me!

Book Review #2: Poison Study

This is the second of an 8-part series, and the book behind today's review is courtesy of Nikki Maldonado: Maria Snyder's Poison Study.

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The story starts in media res. Teenage Yelena, condemned to death by the new military government for pleading guilty to murdering the son of a top general, is granted a fresh lease on life with a new career: food taster of the Commander. Just to ensure that she doesn't run away, the Commander's right-hand assassin Valek slips her a dose of poison that will cause an excruciating death if she doesn't report every morning for a dose of the antidote--an artful leash. Almost as painful as the memories that drove Yelena to murder.

Admittedly, the prose has the artistic appeal of cardboard, as shown in sentences such as "I dodged ineffectively, hampered by the rope tied to my wrist, which anchored me to a post in the center of the room." Still, the story's set-up is clever: a haunted yet strong-willed anti-heroine struggling to overcome the confines of her situation. Additionally, Snyder plants not only doubts about the trustworthiness of her new friends but also details about the regime change, allowing the reader to question initial opinions about whose side Yelena should be on.

As the book progresses, we learn more and more about this world's use of magic, which sounds very close to occult practices of mind control and floating-soul experiences. Demonic arts are still repugnant to me even when secularized (no offhand references to God here, only "fate"), especially as I hope to see Christ's victory in the cross over such powers in Japan in the months ahead. The morality of the characters is also never seriously examined, suggesting instead that violence and sex are more than excusable in extreme situations. From a purely literary standpoint, I wish I could say that these failings and the stiffness of the writing was made somewhat tolerable by a thrilling climax and fitting denouement--but alas. The pacing of the story weakens as the story's focus switches from medieval-fantasy elements to a lust-mance, while the ending offers too many pat solutions to complex plot issues--the logic is apparently: 'resist your demons once and they flee'--and is too abrupt, though it is the start of a series.

Admittedly, my standard for the young-woman-resisting-government-with-hidden-talent genre is high after reading the excellent Hunger Games trilogy earlier this summer, which is much better written. Snyder does a good job realistically depicting a girl's response to abuse and danger, but in my opinion she only imprisons Yelena further in decidedly dark content and second-rate wording.

SUMMARY

Appreciated the political & plot intrigue and conceptual courage

Disliked the New Age elements of mind control & magic, wooden prose and collapse of plot potential in the final act

Though it has an interesting beginning, I would not recommend this book.

Disclaimer--Poison Study includes mild profanity, strong violence, sexual immorality and disturbing scenes.

Rest: God's Prescription

Writing about rest, coming from a can-do culture with a let-things-slide personality and heading to the nation that gave the world a term for "death through overexertion"*, requires some labor. It is akin to describing the joys of playing music to someone who has never picked up an instrument and has no vocabulary or apparent use for the idea.

Yet in the handful of years I have been seeking to actively take Sabbath rests one day a week (generally Sunday), I know that rest is not only Biblical but extremely blessed. May this short refresher (ha!) of a review encourage you to more deeply depend on and glorify God.

Why do we rest? There are two variants of the same command given to God's people in the journey to Israel.

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20.8-11)

"Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day."
(Deuteronomy 5.12-15)

The similarities predominate: it's God's will that His people keep this day holy; it's not merely for their own benefit but also that of their family, dependents (employees perhaps comes closest in modern terminology) and livestock.

But the rationale differs. The original command from the Lord on Mt. Sinai points back to the creation order that He set in motion--we were created to reflect God's ownership of all things and imitate Him in this rhythm. The repetition by Moses in one of his farewell addresses is equally of the Holy Spirit, pointing back to the redemption from Egypt. In that country, the Hebrews were given over to continual, unbroken labor; now and in the new land God is giving them, they are to remember that His rescue of them means that their identity isn't defined by their work, but His buying of them through a definite act of salvation.

My question to us: Is what we call 'rest' merely an interruption of activity? The Lord clearly intends that our down time would remember Him: His creative power, displayed from the beginning until now, and our redemptive history.

In future posts until we get word that our visa paperwork is on the way, I hope to explore this topic a bit more. At the very least it will help me think a little more clearly on the subject once the ministry floodgates open overseas.


*過労死 or karōshi; I knew someone out there would also care for this parenthetical detail

P.S. The idea of keeping the Sabbath weekly as not only feasible but desirable for a college student came from a conversation I had with Lisa Chu (now Ro) and was further encouraged by the Fulton family.

Book Review #1: As I Lay Dying

This is the first of an 8-part series, begun as a team bonding exercise. I resolved to read one book beloved by each of my teammates as a way of getting to know them better and discovering new, good literature.

The book behind today's review is courtesy of Amy Ledin: William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

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It's one of the most challenging books I have ever read. Bear in mind that I have a generally fast reading speed in English and am accustomed to cruising through books of Harry Potter length in 2 days or less. However, Faulkner deliberately toys with language, not merely to obfuscate the plot's direction (though it is tempting to believe this sometimes!) but rather to present the thoughts of his characters in a far more compelling manner than a simple summary of their ideas could ever do.

The book details the plight of the Bundren family, which is almost elemental in its tragedy: matriarch Adie slowly fades from life and her husband and children seek to bury her in her county of birth, as she requested long before. The real story, though, lies in the interaction between the characters as each tells their perspective in idiosyncratically narrated, non-numbered chapters. Key to this are the feuds between the siblings--as Amy pointed out to me after I'd finished reading, main narrator Darl constantly describes the actions of his hot-blooded younger brother Jewel, usually with an eye toward putting him in his place. Occasional narration by outsiders to the family keep at bay the natural inclination to take this sad clan at face value, showing just how pathetic they appear.

This unique structure forces the reader to read between the lines and infer what has happened to horrify or upset each of the characters. Faulkner repeatedly takes simple events, usually bad decisions, and describes them in ways that draw out their pathos and suggest the futility of man to overcome his own inhumanity and petty problems. Fire on one character's clothes, for instance, is described as flowers of sparks blossoming into holes in the fabric--beautiful in the abstract, awful in practical effect. At times the work bears hints of the despair that surfaces more clearly in some of Faulkner's other novels.

Though quite a bit of effort, in my opinion all the confusion and disparate opinions coalesce brilliantly in the powerful final chapter. I don't dare spoil it, and if I did it would have nowhere near its impact without explanation--not unlike a joke's punchline. This wisecrack, though, is not meant to draw forth laughter.

SUMMARY

Appreciated the deft characterization through narration style as well as viewpoint, descriptive power, tour-de-force of an ending

Disliked the pace of the story, which occasionally plodded along; the clearly evil hearts of the characters, though true to life in this respect;

I would recommend this book to adventurous, experienced readers looking for a change of literary perspective, with both a strong stomach for tragedy and quite a bit of free time.

Disclaimer--As I Lay Dying includes sexual immorality and disturbing situations, even though described in cryptic ways