Forty Saved Articles About Rest

You counted them on Sunday, which was itself a use of a Sunday.

Forty. Some are about sabbath and some are about margin and two are about the theology of it, which are the ones you have been saving for when you have time to give them proper attention.

You have finished about four.

The rest are in a folder, and the folder has a small number on it, and the number goes up.

And here is what happened last week, which is why you are reading this. You had an unexpectedly free hour on Wednesday afternoon, the first in about a month, and you opened the folder.

You spent forty minutes of a free hour reading about how to have free hours.

You noticed at the time. That is the part that has stayed with you: you noticed while you were doing it and you carried on doing it, because stopping would have meant the hour was wasted and reading felt like progress.

That is the shape of the whole thing. Rest has become a subject, and subjects are things you get through, and there is a small number on a folder that goes up.

What this page will not do

This is the closing category and the rule is that nothing is added, so nothing is coming that you have to read, try, or begin.

I am not going to explain sabbath to you. Two of those forty do it well and you already know the shape of it, and a forty-first summary would be exactly the joke this page is about.

I am not going to give you a rhythm to adopt. Every rhythm is a thing to maintain, and you have four years of evidence about what happens to things you maintain. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Psalm 23:2-3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

And I am not going to tell you to delete the folder as a spiritual discipline, because then deleting it would become the forty-first item.

What is here is one paragraph of verse and then a suggestion that involves doing nothing.

You are not behind on rest. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not something you get through, and the Holy Spirit was in the garden on Wednesday afternoon for the whole of that hour.

The verse has somebody else doing the making

There is a line in the twenty-third psalm that everybody knows and which has a verb in it that people rarely notice.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.Psalm 23:2-3

He maketh me to lie down.

Not: I set aside time to lie down. Not: I established a rhythm of lying down. He makes the sheep lie down, and anybody who knows sheep knows why the word is there: a sheep will not lie down while it is anxious, and it cannot be talked into it, and the shepherd's work is to produce the conditions in which lying down happens by itself.

The sheep does not organize this. The sheep does not read about it.

And then he restoreth my soul, which is also His verb, and which is what happens once the lying down has occurred rather than something achieved by technique.

Look at what that does to your folder. Every one of those forty articles is addressed to the sheep, and this verse is about the shepherd.

You are not the one who has to produce your own rest. Scripture says he maketh me to lie down in green pastures, Psalm 23:2, and the making is His action and the sheep is not described as arranging anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who produces the conditions rather than supplying instructions for them.

Why studying it made it worse

Because study is work, and work about rest is still work, and the part of you that gets tired does not distinguish by subject matter.

An hour reading about margin costs exactly what an hour reading about anything else costs. It felt different because the topic was restful, and the topic is not the activity.

And there is a second thing. A folder with a number on it produces obligation, always, whatever is in it. Yours happens to be full of articles about not having obligations, which means you have manufactured an obligation out of the cure. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Psalm 23:2-3, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

That is not stupidity. It is what happens when somebody who is good at learning meets a problem that cannot be learned.

Rest is not a subject. That is the whole finding and it took you four articles and thirty-six unread to arrive at it, which is a perfectly ordinary route.

You are not going to think your way into this. Scripture says be still, and know that I am God, Psalm 46:10, and the stillness is named as the condition rather than as a topic to be understood, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting for anybody to complete the reading.

What is put down

The folder.

Delete it, unread. All forty, including the two theological ones you have been saving, and especially those. Scripture holds that ground in Psalm 23:2-3, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

You will feel something at that. Some of them were good and you meant to read them and one of them was recommended by somebody whose opinion you respect.

Delete them anyway, because the folder is not a resource, it is a small standing debt, and it is the only thing on this page that is going to be put down.

And then, tonight or tomorrow, take twenty minutes and do nothing.

Not a practice. Not a rhythm. Twenty minutes, once, sitting outside or in a chair, with nothing to read and nothing to listen to and nothing to complete.

It will be uncomfortable for about six minutes. Then it will be twenty minutes.

There is nothing after that. No week two, no habit, no evaluation of whether it worked.

You are not required to do anything to receive this. Scripture says come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, Matthew 11:28, and the giving is His and the coming is the whole of the instruction, and the Holy Spirit is not asking anybody to build the green pasture themselves.