Get Some Rest: How Limits Bring a Spacious LifeSample

The Invitation to Rest

You probably dream of a day off, a day to simply do nothing, or a day to recover from your work. Rest feels elusive. The reason we’re often so hurried has less to do with our schedule and more to do with the state of our heart.

We ignore our limits. When we do, we find ourselves exhausted, anxious, and not living the spacious life God invites us into when we follow him.

A life without limits is a life of constant hurry, comparison, and underneath it all, a sense that we must always keep earning our worth. We’re stuck in an Instant Pot life: we hope that working harder, achieving more, and doing more will be the ingredients that will create the feast of a good life. All in record time.

In pursuit of freedom we instead serve our work. We are weary. We are a people desperate for rest and so very fearful of it. But why? Do we believe that limits aren’t good?

Limits are built into creation. The world came to be with boundary lines. These boundary lines set up limits that created the pathways to flourishing. Through limits, order was brought from chaos. Limits proceeded from relationship, and they showed us how the world works best when God is king. First there was nothing, and then through the powerful word of the Creator, there was something.

Creation was given limits: to reproduce, to be subject to the changing of seasons. Subject to time, change, and a cycle between fallow and flourishing. There were limits on celestial bodies: the sun was to rule the day, and the moon, the night. Even the naming of the world, of light and dark, of seas and land, gave meaning to something that before had no meaning. Without the loving setting of limits on the natural world, our world would be without form and void.

Limits, given to the world by a loving God, are the conditions for life. We are no different.

As you consider God’s good limits—such as the limits on our body and our time—ask yourself these questions: What are my limits? Am I afraid of stopping? Do I tend to think that hurry or hustle make me more worthy of love? How is God inviting me to rest as I respect my limits?