If you’d like to check it out, I’ve written a follow-up post to this one called “Thoughts on Recreation.” I hope you enjoy it!
Last week, my family I came back from a 9-day vacation to the Middle-of-Nowhere, Idaho. And I mean, the middle of nowhere. No cell service, no WiFi, no cable. Just a cabin in a tiny town situated in a massive county (larger than three US states) that—according to a road sign I saw—only has one traffic light in the entire county.
It was blissful. Not perfect, mind you. There were lost items and yellowjacket stings and damaged vehicles. But aside from all of that, being surrounded by God’s good creation and enjoying His good rest was absolutely blissful.
Being unplugged from technology and having a chance to just rest gave me lots of time to think. And what I spent most of my time thinking about was rest.
Specifically, why is rest so good and why is rest so hard?
Mind you, there are many people in this world for whom rest isn’t hard. For them, rest comes easily. They live in a world of peace and calm and frankly, I envy them.
But for the rest of us—what I strongly guess is the majority of Americans and the majority of people reading this blog—rest is hard.
And yet, rest is good. Really good.
In fact, the creation account of Genesis 1:1-2:3 climaxes, not with the creation of humanity on the sixth day, but with the creation of Sabbath on the seventh day. The very first day that humanity lived on earth was a day of rest. It was the first day that God “blessed” and “made…holy.”
Rest is good. Rest is holy.
In those 9 days cozied up in an Idaho cabin, I found myself thinking about two words: Rest and Recreation.
As I thought about these two words, I began to think that there might be some value in sharing some of the thoughts I’ve had about these two interrelated words, Rest and Recreation. This post will focus on Rest and my next blog post will focus on Recreation.
One day while in Idaho, my wife, father-in-law, and I went on a 75-mile four-wheeler ride. As we drove for several hours, taking occasional breaks for water, snacks, and pictures, I found that the hum of a four-wheeler and the landscape of mountains and flowers and trees made for the perfect ambience to do some thinking.
We had been in Idaho for several days at this point and I was really enjoying the rest I was receiving. So as I drove, I wondered what it was about rest—true, uninterrupted, off-the-grid rest—that was so good.
Then this thought came to me:
Rest—whether sleep, sabbath, sabbatical, or vacation—reminds us of these two truths: the world doesn’t need me and yet the world is better because of me.
The World Doesn’t Need Me
In the 21st century, leaving cell phone service and WiFi is a scary thing. All the “what ifs” constantly come to my mind: What is something happens to a loved one? What if someone needs something at the church? What if my house burns down?
Now, let me confess that I wasn’t entirely unreachable. Before I left, I had given my parents and two coworkers a landline number at which they could reach me. On our first day waking up in Idaho, we had to search out WiFi at a local cafe to track down the missing cell phone and, while dealing with that, I learned of a medical issue with a family member that I occasionally checked on throughout our vacation.
But when the landline didn’t ring and when I came back to learn that there were things mostly as I left them at home and work, I was confronted with the reality: the world doesn’t need me.
Now to some, this may seem like a depressing thought:
You’re telling me that the world doesn’t need my wisdom and intellect? You mean that my family doesn’t need me around? Are you insinuating that my workplace could go on without me?
Yes. I am. I’m not saying that the world, your family, and your job wouldn’t miss you. I believe that they would. But they don’t need you. Think about it: if you died today, would the world cease to exist? Would you family cease to exist? Would your workplace cease to exist? (The only one of these that might actually happen is the latter, in which case, you’ve built your job solely around yourself and I’d suggest training somebody to be able to do what you do in your absence. But I digress.)
The world can go on without you. And you know what? For me, that’s a freeing thought. Because if the world couldn’t go on without me, or if my family or workplace couldn’t go on without me, then that puts a TON of pressure on me to make sure that I don’t make a mistake and ruin my workplace/family/world.
If the world/your family/your job can’t go on without you, then you’ve created a codependence between you and that entity. And the only entire dependence we should have is on God Himself.
The World is Better Because of Me
The second truth that rest teaches us is that the world is better because of you and me.
Prior to years of therapy that helped me understand these two truths, I would have spent most of my rest and vacation thinking, “I hope my coworkers miss me. I hope they realized how much I was contributing to the team. I hope they see value in me.”
If I’m being really honest, I might have even done some micro-sabotaging of the workplace, ensuring that a couple small things would go wrong while I was gone so that I could show just how indispensable I was and just how grateful everyone should be that I was back. And if it wasn’t mentioned at least half a dozen times how much I was missed while I was away, I would have been devastated.
That’s because I used to (and honestly, occasionally still) find my self-worth in the worth others found in me.
But during this trip to Idaho—thanks to therapy and the grace of God—it didn’t take coming back to work to know that the world is better because of me. I know that I have good things to offer to the world, my workplace, and my family. I know that just being me is a gift to others, just like you being you is a gift to others. Sure, my coworkers may have appreciated a reprieve from some of my jokes (though one coworker did say I was missed after I cracked a joke my first day back…), but I believe that each person is created in the image of God and therefore, each person has something good to offer to the world.
These are the two truths that rest teaches us: the world doesn’t need me and yet the world is better because of me.
If we don’t take time to rest—whether through sleep, sabbath, sabbatical, and vacation—we end up believing the opposite.
We believe that the world does need us and that it couldn’t function without us. We feel like we have to keep working more, more, more until we can’t work anymore. To limit our work hours would be to limit our family, limit our workplace, and limit the world. We would be the ones to blame if things went wrong.
We begin to wonder if the world would be better without us. And when that seed of doubt seeps in, then we’d hate to find out that it might be true. So we work, work, work, never taking a break, never allowing anybody to question whether the world, our job, or our home would be better without us.
And when we believe those lies, we reject what the first account of creation calls the very climax of creation: Sabbath. Stopping. Rest.
Could you get to a place where the phone goes off for an hour, a day, an entire week? Could you step away from work and trust that you will be missed but you won’t be needed? Could you enter into God’s holy rest, trusting that He is the only one we need and He is the only one the world needs?
As I type this—on my Sabbath, my day of rest—I’m turning off my phone for a couple hours as I enter into God’s good rest.
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Hunter Bethea 
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