Skip to main content

Finding the Resting Place

Streams of rain poured from the heavens the day after Christmas. The rumbling of raindrops calmed my soul and gave one final justification, of the season, to be a homebody.


Hopefully treasured times of connection with friends and family have filled your December and not just an exhaustive list of rooms to decorate, recipes to make, and items to purchase. Regardless of how your Christmas season turned out, it's drawing to an end. Are you satisfied or are you visited by the post-holiday blues? 


Soon the gyms will be full and mindsets will shift back to goals and work. A part of me loves the idea of a new beginning and casting vision. Today my thoughts are elsewhere. I can't help but notice how quickly we go from one thing to the next. The tides of time roll in and out but, what about rest? 


More than once I have had to learn the lesson of Sabbath rest. The all powerful God, at the very beginning, institutionalized rest weekly. The gift of trusting the Provider enough to refrain from work is just the beginning.  Sabbath rest is mostly about reconnected to and praising God. 


But what of the Lord's rest? Before you answer that God doesn't need rest, remember that He did rest on the seventh day. Whether He needed rest or not, He chose to partake. 


Lately, my focus has been on seeking the indwelling of Holy Spirit. Seems all my faith and experience is summed up to very little compared to the Living God's overmastering.


All the crying out has barely scratched the surface, until this morning.


My devotional led me to 2 Chronicles 6, Solomon's dedication. Solomon had the pleasure of building a place for the Lord to dwell. At the dedication of the temple he talked about many things including sin, defeat, famine, justice, forgiveness, but most of all prayer. Finally, he prayed, "Now, O my God, I pray, let Your eyes be open and Your ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place. Now then arise, O Lord God, to Your resting place, You and the ark of Your strength and power."


We know from 1 Corinthians 6 that God now makes His dwelling in our earthly temples and not the structure of the old covenant. The indwelling is to have the eyes and ears of the Lord day and night. Perhaps, at that point, every thought and word is a prayer. 


God is omniscient, knowing everything, as Psalms 139 illustrates with, "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there." In a sense, we cannot escape God's eyes and ears but Solomon's prayer is touching on something else. The temple then and our physical bodies now are to be the Holy Spirit's resting place!


We can offer God our obedience and praise but to be His resting place? What accommodations seem fitting for the King of Kings?


One thing is for sure, I cannot possibly provide all He deserves. As I reflect on these things I am left only to repent. Fortunately, our Savior offers cleansing through our repentance, and the fellowship between the perfect God and the sinful heart of man is forged. 


When was the last time you repented? Is there a needed forgiveness you have yet to seek? What keeps you from interacting with the Father in this manner?





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Revisting: If I Were a Bird & The Season of the Ox

Today I'm revisting two posts from June of this year. My regular devotional reading has me back in Ezekiel and back to the four living creatures. With the Hebrew calendar ending in September, today was the first day I asked the Lord for my word for this upcoming Hebrew year. All things considered, I felt it necessary to revist these posts. Now, I know of at least one dream that was not from the Lord. I'm not sure I am done learning about the ox, but I've learned a little.  If I were a Bird Recently I had three separate people, in three distinct settings begin a thought with, "If I were a bird."  Bizarre, right? At the first comment, I began to joyfully hear Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" song in my head. By the third comment, in a matter of just forty-eight hours, I was curious. I could not recall ever hearing anyone share such a thought before, and then to have a few in a short matter of time had me wondering. Seemed either an odd coincidence...

Revisting: Wisdom & Authority

Today we are revisting a post from August 18th, 2023. How important it is for each of us to rightly balance wisdom and authority in our own lives. That balance becomes more crucially necessary in marriage. Wisdom & Authority  My husband and I had our routine check-ups this week. He is an emergency room nurse and promptly schedules all of our appointments. For two decades of my adult life, I took care of these matters myself. His planning is a welcome change in married life. He is also handy and takes immaculate care of our yard. Really I won the husband lottery because he also cooks, cleans, and is good at basically everything.   Not that he does everything. We share a fairly even distribution of responsibilities in running our household and raising our daughter. I may not be handy, but I was a responsible homeowner before we met. As someone who left home at 17 and married at 37, I learned how to take care of things on my own, but life is better together. Both my husb...

Revisting: Never Ignore

Today, we are revisting a post from July 13, 2023. One thing we can count on is changing emotions. One day we deal with intense anger, the next extreme apathy. Our emotions may not be wise, but they are telling. Never Ignore I came cruising into my day refreshed and ready to go. Then, I experienced anger. Someone's misinformation inconvenienced my easy, breezy day.  Anger is one of those emotions I find less becoming than others. I was trying to calm myself down when Holy Spirit reminded me that I was not designed to reconcile my emotions on my own. In the past, I have fallen prey to ignoring and stuffing my emotions, but nowadays, I am more likely to try and reconcile my emotions on my own. Perhaps when I have "figured out" what needs to change, I then might go to God to request said changes. Today, I managed to be reminded that God likes us to come to Him raw. In the heat of anger or depths of despair, He wants to be invited into what we are feeling, thinking, and exper...