Retreat to Move Forward

I’m really bad at slowing down.

That’s not a “busy brag”–a term I recently learned and immediately found useful. It describes the tendency some folks have to make their own busy-ness a source of boasting. Surely you’ve interacted with people like this? Their mouths talk all about how stressed and overextended they are, but what they actually want your ears to hear is how important and essential they are. Clergy are especially prone to this way of thinking and speaking. I’ve certainly been guilty of it myself. But I promise, there is no “busy brag” behind my Dispatch today.

When I say I’m really bad at slowing down, I am confessing a sin to you my sisters and brothers. You see, God commands rest. Indeed it is one of the earliest and most consistent commands in Scripture. Genesis makes clear that because God himself rested on the seventh day of creation we also ought to observe a sabbath when we do no work. The practice is enshrined and enjoined in the Ten Commandments. The Prophets offer uncompromising denunciations of those who fail to honor God’s expectation of rest for themselves and for the natural world entrusted to our care. And Jesus himself affirms that the sabbath, even when it had become entangled in a bunch of man-made rules, was ultimately made for human beings–and indeed for the good of human beings. So my busy-ness isn’t some badge of honor or a sign of my significance. It’s really just a sin, plain and simple.

That realization could, of course, send me into a spiral of new stress as I struggle to rearrange my calendar and restructure my work week and find more time to take off and reschedule calls and meetings and commitments and ultimately solve the problem of my sinful busy-ness by…making myself more busy. How’s that for a subtle snare?

It is much better, when one has realized one is guilty of the sin of busy-ness and must therefore repent, simply to stop doing what one is doing. In the moment of realization, put down the particular manifestation of your busy-ness, whether that manifestation is physical, or mental, or spiritual. Then rest.

Now as I said at the outset, I’m really bad at this part. I can recognize that I’ve been overdoing it and that I know I should stop. “But,” says my busy little brain, “surely you’ll rest much better if you just finish answering those emails” or “prepping for that Bible study” or “making those phone calls” or “folding that laundry.” I can know what I have been commanded to do, and even want to do it. And yet somehow I can also let myself believe the lie that doing just a little more work will make the coming rest that much better. That is like believing that eating one more pint of ice cream will make the coming diet that much more meaningful. (I have believed both of these lies, occasionally simultaneously.)

Again, the grace of God cuts through these Gordian knots in which we tie ourselves with a simple word of command: REST. Do not delay it. Do not deny it. Just do it.

And here is a part of that glorious freedom wherewith Christ has made us free: the means given to us for obeying God’s command are as many and varied as we are. There is no wrong way to rest. It might mean sleep, the most basic form. But it might also mean a walk in nature, or time with a friend, or the company of a good book, or watching your favorite show or movie (with no laundry to fold while you do it!). The God who made us diverse and utterly unique in his wondrous image has given all of us equally the command to rest, and numberless ways of obeying that command. Glory to God.

This week, your clergy were blessed to take some time for rest in a very specific form. We were on retreat together at Camp Gravatt with our bishop and our sisters and brothers in ministry from across the Diocese of Upper South Carolina. We heard wonderful talks from the Reverend Dr. Julia Gotta of Sewanee urging us to rest and be restored in Christ through Scripture, our fellowship with one another, the beauty of nature, and the power of silence. Here on the precipice of the busy season of Lent–a season in which we acknowledge and repent of our sins–we stopped to remember that our true strength and effectiveness in ministry and in life comes in obeying God’s commandments. And we rested a little while in that obedience.

I’ll admit, it was hard for me. I found myself glancing at emails, or responding to text messages, or thinking about the burdens I’d left here in Columbia. But grace abounds, even for sinners like me. The invitation to stop our busy-ness and lay aside our sins is always present, always new. And the same Holy Ghost who convicts us of our disobedience also works slowly and surely to transform us into the likeness of Christ.

Beloved, take a little retreat into God’s rest as we enter into the season of Lent. You needn’t go anywhere in particular or engage in some specific program. Just acknowledge where the sin of busy-ness may have ensnared you, and ask that God in his mercy would set you free–even before the work before you is done. Then rest, and relish the chance to slow down into the stupendous love your Savior has for you. Even if you, like me, struggle with that slowing down, you will find rest for your soul.