From the beginning God has tried to show us the importance of rest for our bodies, minds, and spirits. Giving us the divine model, scripture tells us: “ . . . and [God] rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done.” (Gen. 2:2b) When we look at creation, we see rest built into the natural world around us; plants have dormant seasons; animals hibernate for a season. Yet we seem to find it difficult to get the message. We too often miss the clues that God provides.

Fortunately, our bodies do get tired and signal the need for rest. By paying attention to our bodies, we eventually learn to balance our need for work, play, and rest, and come to appreciate the need for moderation in all things. It is just as important, however, to pay attention to our spiritual needs as it is to our physical and mental ones. In our action-oriented culture, it is easy to get so busy doing good things for the Holy One that we forget to take time to rest with the Beloved. Take a look at your life and see how your time is balanced between “doing” and “being.” For many of us, the scale is woefully out of balance with the doing side far outweighing the being side. We need to do better, to spend intentional time resting with God, just being in the Divine Presence.

Thank Goodness we are not left on our own. Jesus call us by name to “Come to me . . . and I will give you rest.” If we are alert, we’ll find that the indwelling Spirit inspires us to rest in the Presence, to be alone with the Beloved, to enjoy the embrace of the One who enfolds us in love. As we experience the blessings of holy rest, we realize we are beginning to balance the scale between doing and being, that each period feeds into the other in a continuous flow of love.