The long-awaited holiday month of August is underway and having begun with Yorkshire Day, it hopefully brings us much-needed time to relax and have fun with family and friends.
We often think of rest as something that we earn to recover from our work. Over the last few months, I’ve been trying to live the other way around. I’m learning to work from a place of rest.
Working from a place of rest means rooting our lives in God. Like the tree “planted by streams of water” that we read about in Jeremiah 17:8-9, God calls us to put our trust in Him, before we engage in the huge challenges our communities and our world are facing.
For many Christians, this means starting each day with Jesus, in silence, with the worship liturgy and Bible readings of Morning Prayer, in bringing our own needs and those of others to God. That discipline makes a statement to myself that when I start my work, whether responsibilities at home, in our churches and schools or with other partners in the Bradford District, I am doing so from a deep place of rest, security and peace in God.
A similar rhythm operates weekly, beginning on the sabbath, and annually, with extended summer holidays or with a spiritual retreat if possible.
Of course, there are situations in our lives when it can be almost impossible to hold onto any kind of daily prayer routine, for example if we’re looking after small children. But even a snatched moment can bring us back to the rest that Jesus offers.
I was inspired by Adam Peaty’s reaction to just missing out on an Olympic gold medal. He had worked so hard, but he wasn’t devastated. His faith in Jesus and his church community had enabled him to emerge from a dark and obsessive place and to swim with the “liberation and freedom” of a child of God.
We may not all be Olympic swimmers, but we can claim with Peaty the promise that when we share with Jesus his ‘yoke’, we will find rest for our souls.