When Rest Can Feel Risky

Throughout the year, each member of the staff takes turns offering a devotion to begin our weekly staff meeting. This week we heard from Ashley Robinson, Administrative Assistant for Children and Family Ministry. Her reflection on rest caused me to come up short and consider my own need for sabbath. I offer it to you this week in the hope that you will find your rest in God.

January often comes with a loud message: New Year, New Me. This is the time to reset, to push forward, to make big changes, to become more disciplined, more productive, and more ambitious than we were before.

And yet, January is also the middle of winter. The days are still short and lacking sunlight. The ground is still hard. In nature, this is not a season of expansion or visible growth. It is a season of rest, of dormancy, of hibernation and conserving energy for what will come later. 

There’s a disconnect here that many of us feel. Our culture tells us to accelerate, while creation invites us to slow down. Scripture reminds us again and again that God works through seasons and rhythms. God rests. Jesus withdraws to quiet places. Even seeds must spend time buried in the ground before they can bear fruit. Faithfulness, in God’s economy, is not always loud or efficient or measurable. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says to those who are weary, “Come to me, all you that are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” This invitation reminds us that rest is not a failure or an escape, but a place where God meets us.

And still, for many people, rest is not simple. Rest can feel risky. In a society shaped by urgency and productivity, rest can feel like falling behind or letting others down. And for some communities, rest has often been denied, monitored, or framed as being lazy or something that must be earned, instead of recognizing that rest is a human and holy need. For many, survival itself has required constant effort and vigilance. And I believe that this is passed down through generations. 

With all that is happening in our world right now, it feels especially important to listen to voices that name our need for rest with honesty and care. Voices that remind us that rest is not a reward for hard work, but a faithful resistance to systems that measure worth by output alone. That remind us that the generational cycle of overproduction is worthy of being broken. I recently learned from Raquel Martin, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, that there are several different kinds of rest including mental rest, social rest, sensory rest, emotional rest, and spiritual rest and that it’s important to figure out which you need because sleep isn’t always the answer.

I would like to close with a prayer from Black Liturgies titled “For When Rest Feels Like a Risk.” This prayer is addressed to the Rested God, a reminder that the Almighty rests with us in all our sabbath.

A prayer for when rest feels like a risk.

Rested God,

We want more than a life lived exhausted. That you have woven healing rhythms of rest into our minds and bodies reminds us we are worthy of habitual restoration. Keep us from apologizing for our own healing, that we would know that when we pause or rest, we are restoring not only our own bodies but the very condition of a world held captive by greed and utility. We grow weary of societies who view us as more machine than human, more product than soul. The fear that we won’t survive without overworking stalks our days. Liberate us from the depraved socioeconomic structures that require that the poor and vulnerable sacrifice their own rest at the altar of survival and opportunity. Protect us from fear as we rest with you, breath with you. Remind us that the beauty and paradox of our humanness is that we were made to close our eyes, that we might see. May it be so.