Addicted To Busy: Recovery For The Rushed Soulናሙና

The Jesus Pace is Non-Legalistic

When we finally do withdraw, we can take courage from the fact that Jesus saw fit to withdraw too. Following suit, we, too, can leave the prevailing busyness that tends to run our lives; we can leave the “people with needs” who threaten to implode if we really do go; we can leave the stuff of preoccupation in favor of the peace we so desperately seek. We can do all these things because Jesus did them and because he was showing us how to live. Poets say he withdrew to be reminded of his heavenly home. I say he did it to show us what a rhythmic life is like, to show us that divine rest is not an obligation but an invitation. And to show us what it’s like to respond with a heartfelt yes.

This is where I’d missed the point, just as the Jews in Jesus’s day missed the point. I’d started institutionalizing my rest, insisting that it had to start at a certain time on a certain day, each and every week, and that when something or someone got in the way of it, that diversion would equal my doom. My rest had become my lord, something I had to appease, lest I died. Jesus never saw rest this way. Remember his declaration in Mark 2:27?

To the Jewish people listening that day, shock must have registered in their hearts. They had spent their entire lives orienting themselves around the rules and regulations of Sabbath observation. What on earth did Jesus mean?

He wasn’t trying to be disrespectful; he was declaring truth. They’d totally missed the point by turning God’s rest into a list of to-dos. D. A. Carson wrote:
The giving of the Sabbath law was not meant to be a burden; in fact the Sabbath was to reflect God’s compassion for His people, as well as to emphasize the character of His holiness. But this intention was forgotten in arrogance and rebellion as legalism and traditionalism grew. The true concept of the Sabbath law was proclaimed again and again by God’s prophets who stressed the covenant relationship, but people were unwilling to listen.

Jesus wasn’t into legalism, evidenced in the way he “worked” on various Sabbaths—picking wheat, healing disfigured people—and also in the way he rested when people thought he should work. What has always been most notable about Jesus’s voluntary withdrawals is not that he rested but when he chose to rest. He withdrew to rest when people still needed him and also when his ego would have been tempted to stay. Jesus didn’t merely rest when rest was expected; he also rested when he was at the top of his game.