Resting

Restless is the heart until it rests in God. - St. Augustine of Hippo
So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest." - Ps 95
. . . do solemnly swear or affirm . . . - Oath of Enlistment

Praying Psalm 95 this morning, upon which I have reflected several times in the past, I came to consider afresh the last verse.  The end of this Psalm always struck me as harsh compared to the rest of it.

This morning I thought about it in a different way.  Perhaps the original sense of this verse was as I have always understood it, and it is probably important to keep in mind the effect that letting our hearts go astray has on the heart of God.  I believe such straying grieves him greatly.  But this morning I'm considering, perhaps along with St. Paul, who wrote at length about entering into the Sabbath rest, that God's "anger" and "swearing" from this verse are not at all as we tend to understand them.  Just as I believe God's "jealousy" is very different from ours, being jealous on our behalf rather than his own, I believe his anger is the same way.  He is angry for our sake, because we lack the sense and insight to be angry for our own, at least in useful ways.  Oh, we get angry with ourselves often enough, but it is too frequently shrouded in a fear of change that causes that anger to perpetuate itself rather than motivate us to grow. Our inability to enter into his rest may not be because God prevents us from entering into it as a punishment for letting our hearts wander.  Rather, in his anger on our behalf God affirms for us the consequences of letting our hearts wander far from him: we cannot enter into his restful presence so long as we allow our hearts to go astray.

There are many ways we do that, and not all of them are inherently sinful.  In fact, I believe that many of the good and important things that are ours to do may end up leading our hearts astray when we falsely believe that any of them are more important than gifting ourselves with adequate time to enter quietly into God's presence.  It's easy for us to believe we don't have time to spend unproductively, but the greater truth is that the most productive thing we can do each day is spend time resting in God's presence, basking in his great glory and boundless love for us.

Perhaps it is about normal for me to get halfway into the Lenten season "by program" before being able to reach a quiet time in which I can rest a little.  But I'm convinced that this norm is not God's plan for me.  Rather, he'd have me not be so busy, so astray with things that I deem so urgent or which appeal to me more, so that I might receive the gift of his rest to empower my daily walk with him.