Come Apart And Rest A While

Four minutes. She got to four minutes.

She had decided to sit outside for a while because a friend had said something to her that landed, and it was a decent afternoon, and there was nothing that had to happen in the next hour.

She lasted four minutes and then went in and did something.

Not because she wanted to. Because a feeling arrived at about minute three and by minute four it was unbearable, and the feeling is not exactly guilt but it is next door to it: a sense of being wrong, of being visible in a way she should not be, of other people working while she is not.

She would not describe herself as driven. She is not competitive and she is not trying to prove anything to anybody.

It is simpler and more childish than that, and she knows it, and knowing it has not helped. Somewhere very early she picked up that sitting down is what you do when everything is done, and nothing has ever been done, and so sitting down has never been legitimate.

Four minutes. On a good afternoon. With nothing needing her.

You may know that bench. Not exhaustion and not drivenness. An inability to sit still that has a moral shape to it and that arrives about three minutes in.

He said it in the middle of the demand

Here is Christ giving an instruction, and the situation He gives it in is the whole point.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.Mark 6:31

Read the second half first, because that is the situation. Many coming and going. No leisure so much as to eat. That is not a quiet week. That is demand exceeding capacity, visibly, in front of everybody.

And in the middle of that, He says: come apart and rest a while.

Not once this settles down. Not when the crowd thins. In it. With people still coming and going and the need entirely unmet.

That matters more than any argument about rest, because it removes the condition you have been waiting for. He did not attach the rest to the work being finished. The work was not finished. It was not close to finished.

You are given rest by Christ Himself in the middle of unfinished demand, and that is the only setting He gave it in. Mark 6:31 has the instruction spoken while people are still coming and going, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands that to a woman who cannot last four minutes on a bench.

Now let me say what this is not, because you have probably been told the other thing.

I am not going to give you a schedule or tell you how much rest you should be having. I am not going to hand you a rule about evenings or Sundays, because I cannot see your life and rules handed out from a distance become one more thing to fail at.

And I am not going to tell you that the feeling at minute three is sin. It is not. It is old and it is probably from very early and it arrived before you had any say in it.

You are permitted to sit down while things are unfinished, and the permission came from Christ in a week that was worse than yours. The written word puts the resting inside the crowd rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is not the one producing the feeling at minute three.

The honest half. The feeling will still arrive at minute three tomorrow. This is not a message that removes it, and I would be lying if I dressed it up as one.

What is different is what you do with it when it arrives. Right now it functions as an instruction and you obey it within sixty seconds. It can become a thing you notice and sit through, and sitting through it is the entire exercise.

There is a part only you can do. Four minutes becomes five. Empty hands. In the daylight. While things are unfinished, because they always will be.