Finding Rest in God’s Eternality
I collapsed into the wingback chair. A long walk on the trail pushing the stroller over bumps and ruts in the summer heat and humidity had exhausted my body. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and begged for water. I propped my feet up and gulped down a glass of water and chewed into an energy bar to restore my body.
My eyes flitted over all the unfinished work surrounding me. The laundry still needed to be folded, the office still needed to be organized from cleaning out the desk, the kitchen floor still needed sweeping from supper, and the bathroom still needed renovating.
On days like this, I long for eternal strength. I wish I never became weak or faint. I wish I could stay up into the late hours of the night finishing all these projects without taking a break. Sometimes I even try to push through, knowing I’ll pay for it that night as I try to fall asleep with a racing mind and throbbing feet.
I not only do this in physical exhaustion but mental and emotional exhaustion. When I feel as if my mind is going to break from helping one more person, comforting one more screaming child, or volunteering for one more activity, I put my head down and plow forward anyway, taking on even more tasks.
Yet as humans, we will never know what it’s like to run without tiring, to exercise without sore muscles, to work at a desk all day and not have our minds turn to mush, or to care for every single hurting person we encounter. Though we may resist and pump more caffeine into our veins, eventually our bodies will give out. As mothers, we know how lack of sleep crumples us in every way and what happens when we spend an entire meal running from child to child serving food without ever sitting down to eat ourselves.
Can you relate to this constant drive toward exhaustion? This regular imaginary play that we can be eternal like God? Are you tired of it—but likewise feel as if you can’t stop? We must relinquish such travail and toil and rest in God’s eternality—though first, we should understand where this drive stems from.
The Culture of Efficiency
What leads to this constant striving to be eternal? Perhaps our modern culture plays a part.
Our current North American culture upholds and honors that which is efficient and produces the most content or product. If we have nothing to show for our work at the end of the day, was it truly worth it? If we didn’t maximize production and speed on every task, did we truly do our best? As AI continues to thrive, we may begin to wonder: if I can’t be eternal like God, I might get replaced by a machine.
Meanwhile, much of our meaningful work is anything but efficient. Relationships, parenthood, marriage, art, education, and pastoral care (to name just a few) are utterly inefficient when done well. It’s not productive to spend eighteen years producing a well-equipped, godly human being. Am I truly maximizing my time by spending several hours working on a painting only my husband and children will see? Perhaps you could have written a month’s worth of sermons this week if that family didn’t have an unexpected crisis.
Often we have less to show for ourselves at the end of the day, and to our world that is humiliating. But God calls us to a much humbler way of life: rest and trust in his eternality, accepting the good limits he placed on us.
God is Eternal and We Are Not
God is eternal. Dwell on that for a moment. In contrast to our desperate need to rest and replenish ourselves, God continues in perfect strength and power. He never grows weary. Even his understanding is limitless. Nothing can stop God. As the prophet Isaiah proclaimed,
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Is. 40:28–31)
This truth shouldn’t only bring us comfort but confidence in God. He can never fail—it’s contrary to his nature. He keeps the world spinning, the planets aligned, the oceans inside their boundaries, the animals fed, and still hears every one of our prayers. Distraction isn’t a concern for him. When we cry out to him all day long, he never wearies of it.
As a mom and fixer, my instinct is to burn myself out trying to be God for everyone. This may sound like one of those fake “weaknesses” we put on our resumes, but pride and a lack of trust lie just beneath the surface of such an instinct. I don’t dare entrust my family, my responsibilities, or other activities to the people God placed in my life because I believe I can do it better. I toil to be God because I believe I can manage the world better than God.
Faith in God’s eternality requires submission, humility, wisdom, and trust—which all seem to be a lot more difficult than pride.
Trusting God’s eternality means we don’t need to carry the burden of being there for every person in pain, meeting every need in our home on our own, or fulfilling every volunteer activity because God sovereignly orchestrates them all without even the slightest droop of his hand. Though I’m exhausted after chasing and correcting my little ones all morning, God spends years drawing us to himself and never exhausts from it. He gives to us daily and never needs refilling. This is the God we worship.
Obeying the Sabbath
While the Israelites traveled through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, they complained about their lack of food, so God sent manna (a bread-like substance). Each morning, the manna appeared on the ground and the Israelites had to gather only enough for the day because any leftovers would rot. But on the sixth day, things went a bit differently:
On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” (Ex. 16:22–23)
On the sixth day, God allowed enough manna to be preserved for the following day so the Israelites could rest on the Sabbath. As per usual, the Israelites tried to go their own way: some wandered out to gather on the Sabbath and found nothing.
God didn’t put the Sabbath in place to control us. Rather, he did so because we’re not limitless creatures with the ability to work without taking breaks. God purposely made us finite, requiring rest, food, shelter, and help from the community. For that reason, God established the Sabbath by resting on the seventh day of creation. He didn’t need the rest but instead set up a pattern for us to follow (Gen. 2:1–3). Sometimes obedience looks like resting when we want to do good work. Rest requires trust and faith that God can work while we rest.
God provides a beautiful picture of the gospel through the Sabbath day. Just as I need physical rest because of my finitude, I also require spiritual rest to save me from sin. I tried to save myself by keeping the law but failed. Yet God, rich in mercy, sent Jesus to pay the full penalty for my sins while I received his righteousness. I can rest secure in his finished work rather than striving in the impossible toil of fulfilling the law on my own.
Our finitude displays how much we are unlike our Creator. Our frail bodies can’t work without ceasing, and we cannot live a perfectly holy life.
Entrusting Ourselves (and Work) To God
Becoming a mom of a toddler and twin boys makes me acutely aware of my need to rest and replenish my body and mind. I’ve had to set boundaries to protect myself from my perfectionistic tendencies of working until everything on my to-do list is checked off.
Being eternal, our good God offers us eternal life. By putting our faith in his Son’s work on the cross, we can spend eternity in unbroken harmony with this awesome God. No more tears, no more weariness, no more aching muscles. When we feel weak and frustrated by how limited we are, we can turn to him and find rest, knowing he has taken care of all we need for salvation in the gospel. We don’t need to work without ceasing to prove our worth to our Father because Christ has already accomplished all we need for salvation. We can now serve God out of a place of rest and gratitude. And until our eternal rest, we can set boundaries and practices to help us steward our time and energy to God’s glory.
Lara d’Entremont is first a wife and a mom to three little wildlings in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. While the wildlings snore, she primarily writes—whether it be personal essays, creative nonfiction, or fantasy novels. She desires to weave the stories between faith and fiction, theology and praxis, for women who feel as if these pieces of them are always at odds. Her first book, A Mother Held, is a collection of essays on the early days of motherhood and anxiety. Much of her writing is inspired by the forest and ocean that surround her, and her little ones that remind her to stop and see it. You can find more of her writing at laradentremont.com.