Un-Doing

Sometimes I add already completed items to my ‘To Do’ list just to have the satisfaction of striking a line through it.

Perhaps that makes me a productivity addict?

Until recently, I thought this compulsion was benign… just my personality or temperament. God’s been putting the notion of rest in front of me lately and showing me how my drive to ‘do’ has crept into my relationship with Him and my understanding of how He views me. It started with Jeannette Duwe’s post on the Ironing Board. And then He drove the message home in my heart this weekend at a retreat with the youth group. 

The speaker harkened back to Exodus, to a time when the Israelites were enslaved for 400 years. Moses and Aaron, sent by God, went before Pharaoh to ask for the people’s release. Pharaoh’s reply was curt and cruel:

That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and overseers in charge of the people: “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”
— Exodus 5:6-9 NIV

A series of horrific plagues ensued as a result of Pharaoh’s stubbornness, but eventually Moses lead the people out of Egypt and through the divinely-parted waters of the Red Sea. God began to provide for their nutritional needs through daily manna (Exodus 16:4). His instructions contained a single caveat:

“On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
— Exodus 16:5 NIV

The seventh day was to be a day with no work. Gather a double portion on the sixth day and rest on the seventh. Moses related it to them this way, just a few short verses later:

He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord.'”
— Exodus 16:23a NIV

The retreat speaker pointed out the sharp contrast this was to their previous way of living. They had been valuable to Pharaoh exclusively for the labor they provided to Egypt. Now, God communicates to them an entirely different message about their worth through this day of rest:

You are loved because of who you are, not what you do.

As I listened, I was confronted with the truth that my refusal to rest — my drive to do — is undergirded with an unspoken, subconscious belief that my value lies in my performance.

I didn’t even know it was there.

My mind started whirring with the things I needed to change and do differently in response. But there it was again: ‘do differently.’

No matter how much or little I do, I am loved because God conferred His image upon me and chose to create me. I cannot do anything more to earn His affection because I already have it. To not press pause on my perpetual play-list of life, denies the purpose and sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on my behalf and detracts from the opportunity to bask in the light of His love.

Stop with me. Pause, if you will… Be still and be reminded that He rescued us because He delights in us (Psalm 18:19).

Rest, friend. Rest.