I remember being a new mother and feeling more tired than ever. My baby didn’t sleep well, and I wondered how I was going to get through the day, let alone the entire baby stage.
As moms, we feel pressure to be superhuman in every way. We must have infinite patience with our children while keeping the house clean, and we must excel at work, in the gym, and in every other facet of life. It’s unrealistic, I know, but I still fell into the trap. I felt frustrated, sad, and angry. And I felt tired. Tired from rocking a fussy baby for hours and breastfeeding all day.
But I know it’s not just moms who feel this way. There seems to be a widespread idea in society that we should always be doing more. My kids are teenagers now, and I see it in them too. As they enter high school and start thinking about adulthood, I see how they could easily fall into the culture of doing more, achieving more, filling up their schedules, and getting caught up in the hustle and bustle.
It reminds me of the prophet Elijah. In the Bible, we hear about Elijah performing a great miracle, summoning fire from heaven to prove that Yahweh is the one true God. The moment is epic! But because of this, King Ahab and his wife Jezebel despise him even more and threaten his life. He flees into the desert, exhausted and afraid. His mind is clouded as he struggles to remember God’s power.
Elijah felt exhausted by the outpouring of spiritual, physical, and emotional energy, and I felt that way too, when I was a new mom. Maybe there wasn’t fire falling from the sky, but there was a screaming baby.
And I know there are many people who feel similarly exhausted. College students studying late into the night for an important exam. Executives in their corporate jobs. Pastors doing their best to meet the needs of their congregation. Many of us feel tired from the demands of life and feel the pressure to do more.
But what if we don’t have to do more? Maybe God is calling us to rest.
In the story of Elijah, he goes to a mountain, finds a cave, and takes a nap. And then an angel comes. Elijah is lying asleep under the solitary broom tree, when suddenly a messenger touches him and says, “Get up and eat!” Elijah looks, and there at his head is a hearth cake and a jug of water. After eating and drinking, he lies down again, but the angel of the Lord comes back a second time, touches him, and says: “Get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you!” He gets up, eats, and drinks; then strengthened by that food, he walks 40 days and 40 nights to the mountain of God, Horeb. (1 Kings 19:5-8)
The fact is that Elijah needed rest, and we need rest too. Elijah needed a good dose of truth, and we need a good dose of truth too. Above all, we need the gentle touch of our loving Heavenly Father and permission to take a nap.
When God calls us to rest, it is because God knows it is good for us. God cares for us in a holistic way—for our physical, emotional, and spiritual health—and knows we will try our hardest to prove our worth. But our worth doesn’t come from work. We have worth because we were created in God’s image, and we have nothing else to prove. We see God caring for Elijah, providing food for him in the desert, and God wants to do the same for you.
God also calls us to rest to remind us that it is not by our own strength that we accomplish anything, but by God’s. When we try to do everything through our own strength, we can become quite proud, forgetting that it is God who has ultimate power. Such pride brought about the first sin, when Adam and Eve tried to live independently from God, and humanity has struggled with this ever since. We try to prove our worth, forgetting that it comes from God in the first place.
This is solidified in Jesus’ work on the cross. Through his sacrifice, our sin was atoned for, and we were clothed in Christ’s righteousness. We no longer have to strive to achieve anything; we can rest in Jesus’ finished work.
“So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God, for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their labors as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs.” (Hebrews 4:9-11)
We do not depend on our own work, achievements, or successes. We need not overexert ourselves or wear ourselves out. We can rest. We trust God, knowing that we are sufficient because Jesus is sufficient and our life is now hidden in his. It is a reminder that our weary hearts desperately need.
It is also a beautiful truth that the world needs to hear. The world does not need to see Christians bustling frantically and refusing to rest. When we rest, however, we tell the world—and ourselves—that we trust not in our own strength but in God’s.
The world needs to hear about Jesus, our eternal rest, and it needs to see an example of what it means to trust fully in a reliable and good God.
Let us remember Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Image: Unsplash/Sid Leigh
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