Jo Acharya | October 26, 2022

Did your teachers ever keep you inside at break time as a punishment for misbehaving?

When I was preparing a talk on rest recently it struck me that in the Bible, God never took away rest as a punishment. He gave the weekly Sabbath as both a gift and a command, and even when everything was going wrong he never ever said “That’s it, you’ve gone too far – no more Sabbath for you!” I think that’s because unlike us, God doesn’t see rest as a reward for good behaviour. He sees it as the essential thing we all need, the thing he is constantly trying to call us back to (Matthew 11:28).

God loves it when we can stop and be still, confident that we are his treasured children, made holy by his grace. When we finally fully absorb the remarkable truth that we don’t have to work to earn his love, we’ll know true freedom, true peace and true rest.

God longs for this for us. He longs to see his unruly kids release our heavy loads, our anxious energy, our striving to do more and more – and just sink into the soft, strong warmth of his everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

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