Rest

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.     Matthew 11:28

Rest is one of the most welcome words in every language.  How we look forward to sleep at the close of a difficulty day, or to vacation after a year of hard work.  But the only people who know what real rest is are the children of God.  Augustine testified from personal experience, Our souls are restless, O God, until they find their rest in Thee.  Revelation says that the godless are like the restless ocean, never at peace.  The Christian, on the other hand, enjoys a deep-down peace which the world never knows, and he look forward to that perfect rest predicted in Revelation 14:13.

That rest, however, is not slothful indolence.  Revelation also tells us that the redeemed in glory serve their Master day and night.  They never rest in the sense that we usually think of it, for the simple reason that they are never tired.

There should be more of this “rest” on the day that we call the Sabbath or day of rest.  Many people think that Sunday is given to us for loafing, and they feel very virtuous if they do nothing all afternoon but sleep off a heavy dinner or waste time in idle visiting.

That is not what Sunday is for.  Jesus used to be very busy on the Sabbath, much to the annoyance fo the religious prigs who thought they were being righteous by doing absolutely nothing.  Sunday is a day for resting one’s soul by reading devotional material, especially God’s Word; by helping others in a dozen ways that only Sunday offers opportunity for.  This is the rest that Christ commends.

Christ’s Coming to the Individual

Editor’s Note:  This is somewhat personal for me as decisions are being made today about putting my sister on hospice.  My sister was in the last wave of people to get polio before the vaccine was released.  She spent some time in an iron lung as a result and had lifelong weakness affecting her upper extremities and torso due to the illness.  However, I never heard her ask, “Why me?” or complain about it.  But this is “why her.”  Because of her illness, my mother, who was a nurse, offered to help my father who was widowed and trying to care for two young girls on his own while shepherding a congregation.  My mother helped with my sister’s physical therapy and the result of that was the eventual marriage of my parents.  So neither I nor my brothers would be here if this didn’t happen to my sister.  Perhaps because of the polio (or maybe not, we never really talked about it), my sister remained single and because of that was very much involved in our families lives, despite the age difference.  She, more often than not, joined us at Christmas time for a couple of weeks as well as during the summer, often being a part of summer vacations.  She was also in a position to help my parents with my brother’s and my college tuition, or so I’ve been told.  There are many other examples of the ultimate benefit to others that my sister’s polio had, but suffice it to say, she can expect to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  That is “why her”, even if she did not ask the question.

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.      I Thess. 5:22

If a person could predict with certainty that the world will end, say, before [2040], a shock of surprise would go around the globe.  But the simple fact is that the majority of all people who are living on the earth right now are going to be dead by 2040 or even before.  Leaving out dates all together, one can say with absolute certainty that Christ is going to return during the life time of every one of us, because our individual deaths, which are so certain and comparatively close, are just as final and frightening as the end of the world.

We are so time-conditioned that somehow we have the feeling that if Jesus doesn’t return until a thousand years from now (just as millions of people have been dead that long since Jesus left this earth) a lot can happen between now and then. A lot can and will, if Jesus tarries, but nothing for the dead.  As far as a person’s individual fate is concerned not a single thing happens between his death and the final judgment.  For all practical purposes his death marks the end of the world.  Christ’s summons for him is the same as the last trump.  Hebrews says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.”

When you and I talk about a certain individual as having been dead so many years we forget that at the moment a person leaves this earth time ceases altogether for him.  The interval between a person’s death and Christ’s coming, no matter how many years elapse here upon earth, is like the “timeless” interval between falling into a sound sleep one evening and waking many hours later on the morrow.

Puzzled Thessalonians

For you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly…                   1 Thessalonians 5:2, 3

There is a town in Greece today by the name of Salonica, the same one to which Paul wrote the letter to Thessalonika.  The Christians who were converted under Paul in that town never dreamed that the world would last for another two thousand years.  They thought that Jesus was going to come back while they were still upon earth.  So when their loved ones continued to die, one by one, they naturally got to wondering what the future had in store for those dear people and for themselves.

It is to answer that question that Paul writes them this little letter, and assures them that when Jesus comes back to earth He will bring our loved ones with Him.  The bodies of those who have “fallen asleep” (as Paul refers to believers who have died), will be raised from the dead when Jesus returns, and then we will all together meet the Lord in the air.

Everybody believes that sooner or later we shall die.  Many people, especially in these days of nuclear explosions, believe that the world will come to an end some day.  But the difference between Christians and non-Christians lies in how they think of that certainty, and what they do about it.  One of the reason whether is so much intoxication these days is that people do not want to face such sober thoughts as death and disaster.  They drink in order to escape reality, to make their minds fuzzy, and to give a pink glow to the world.  But we “are all sons of light, and sons of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness …They that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunken are drunken in the night.  But let us, since we are of the day, be sober.”  Then, whether Jesus comes during the day or at night, we shall not be caught napping.