In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:3 ESV)
Rest and Hope
Boxcars look pretty big when seen from the railroad crossing. But boxcars are even bigger from the inside when filled with 50-pound burlap bags of carrots waiting to be loaded onto pickup trucks. Ninety degrees, extremely humid, we were in a boxcar oven being roasted for Sunday dinner.
Two of us worked twelve-hour days for two weeks before the job was done. I learned a lot about rest that summer. When the bed of a pickup was full, we had a brief respite while a new pickup took its place. We lay on the floor of the boxcar and breathed. And we stared at the old clock someone had mounted on the boxcar wall. Hoping that the minute hand would move faster. Hoping that the hour hand was wrong.
And then, promptly at seven each evening, we went home and slept.
Somehow, the next morning we awoke and had the energy and strength to do it again.
That cycle of work, small rest, and true rest is present in our lives every day and every week.
We have small rests from the sweat of our brows each night… and bigger rests on the Lord’s Sabbath. And even that rest is a pointer towards the BEST rest. Those mansions. That place. Heaven.
Jesus prepared a place of rest for us. That is what that mansion over the hilltop really is.
Heaven is a restoration to the time before rest was needed as a cure to Adam’s curse. Heaven is rest, not in the sense of sitting back with our feet up drinking iced tea… but rest from troubles, struggles, pains, hardship, reasons to worry, and sin.
What makes the rest grand though, is not how relaxing is it. It will not be relaxing at all. Heavenly rest will be the most exciting thing we can imagine. Because we will be with Jesus!
When we rest now, in our little ways of sleep and Sabbath, we are tasting what we will feast on in heaven. We are sampling Him. We are enjoying Him. We are focusing on Him. We are emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually being WITH Him… in preparation and practice for when we are also physically with Him.
When we rest now, therefore, let it be about Him, not us. Go to sleep thinking about Him, talking to Him, considering Him, experiencing Him. Let the Lord’s Day be about Him… the Man that the Sabbath was made for. (Mark 2:27, 28 ESV)
And let today’s rest become hope.
Take the Hope God grants us.