Rest and Delight

God created… and it was very good. Very good! He rested.

What is rest? Not just ceasing.... Not just some heavenly futuristic destination we will somehow achieve someday.... Rather, God's declaration of "Very Good!" flows over into rest. God rested, savored his creation. But rest is to be shared--a purpose woven into the fabric of creation: to rest in him, with him. To share in his delight. To be delighted in. To delight in God.

Rest on the seventh day, the perfect day, the conummate day. Rest, the climax of creation. Again, link with rest and delight. The very purpose of creation is delight. For is not glory most manifest when something is most loved, honored, enjoyed, delighted in for its very self? That is, is not God most glorified when we are so completely just enthralled and enraptured and delighted in him? We were created to rest in him--to find our all and all in him. We were created to delight in him--to rest in, savor, glorify him.

This cosmic purpose concenters in the quotidian of my life. My purpose is to be delighted in God and to be delighted in. To enter this deep rest of joy in mind, soul, body, strength, spirit, heart..... Yet. Yet. Gasp. I'm gasping for air, trying to cling to hope and life. It seems so otherworldly to a broken soul and a broken body that cannot drag on. To a mother grieved, worried, wringing hands about her children under her ex's custody. To a woman always hypervigilant--another word may set off violence in her spouse. To the one who has a pile of bills in red. To the one sitting beside the bedside of a mother who no longer can remember her. Rest? Delight? Today? Now?

C. S. Lewis wrote that one of the greatest dangers of suffering is not that he would lose faith in God, but what he would begin to believe about God—to see a distorted version of God. When day after day for months on end is dark and without sun, it is easy to forget that God is a God who wants to bless. He is a Giver, Blesser, Delighter, Rejoicer by nature.

Oh, my soul--remember:

The Man of Sorrows came so we could have his fullness of joy.

The Shalom-Giver, Rest Himself, wandered on this earth so we could return home, to enter God's own rest.

The Morning Star comes and gives the joy-that-comes-in-the-morning (Ps. 30:5; 126). The Morning Star gives to the one who overcomes the Morning Star (Rev. 22:16; Rev. 2:28). Himself. Bringer of hope, light, life, a new day, a new era.

In Christ, The Yes-of-All-Promises (2 Cor. 1:20-22). In him, rest. In him, the purpose of creation is fulfilled. In him, delight. My goal, creation’s goal, it is finished. And God said, it is very good.

This is my God. Even as I cry out, "O God..." This is your God. Even if you walk in the wilderness, he is still the Giver. Still the Blesser. Still the Rejoicer. Not in a distant, aloof way, rejoicing while you remain in the dark. But it is this that gives us hope--only the joy of God is sufficiently powerful to overwhelm and drive out the darkness. We cling to the fact he is joy. He is rest. The Rejoicer will cause all to rejoice. We will enter his rest; we will return to Eden.

"You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound" (Psalm 4:7).