Rest.
I hate napping. It’s one of my least favorite pastimes ever. It makes me feel lazy and unproductive. Plus, with all I need to get done right now, it makes me feel stressed that I won’t get things done in time. Not to mention the fact that I only have two weeks left here and I should be spending every waking moment with the people here that I so dearly love. It’s obvious. Right? And yet God, in His sense of humor and sovereignty of my true needs, has brought me to a point of sickliness over the past three and a half days that all I can do is simply rest.
Curled up in bed yesterday, tired and achy, I deliriously tried to reconcile myself to the fact that all of my friends were just outside the door in the main room and I was inside, quasi-sleeping. One of my friends, Gcebile, was even leaving that day, and I…was sleeping? What kind of a friend does that?! Besides, if I was going to be inside our room, I should be taking advantage of the alone time, since Katie and Lila were in town that day. First of all, I needed to write a blog to post today (I am currently writing this at the internet café, technically wasting my internet time). Then I needed to prepare material for both older and younger women’s Bible studies. Also, I needed to get all of the letters finished that I’m writing to the girls here. I’ve already had to say goodbye to a couple of them leaving to stay in Manzini for the break from school. And most importantly, I just really needed to have some quality alone time with God, and what more perfect opportunity would ever come?
“Rest.”
No, it wasn’t actually audible, but it may as well have been, how firmly that word was impressed into my heart.
“It’s like I keep telling you. I just want to be with you. I just want you to be with Me. Just rest. Rest in My presence. Sleep in My arms.”
In that moment, I no longer needed to worry. I no longer needed to strive. I didn’t even need to put my mind on over-drive to analyze exactly what God was wanting to teach me or trying to convert the alone time into an intense internal prayer opportunity. Sometimes “prayer” is in the silence. Humans even have communication without words. Who am I, with this finite human capacity, to think that God would be limited to communication via words? Of course, His language with us far transcends all that I know or have experienced.
So, I lay with God in what my mom calls “companionable silence.” We were still together, and this wasn’t simply a figment of my imagination, attempting to justify or rationalize my time of resting. In His presence I experienced deep peace. And despite the fact that it may sound like I’m just over-spiritualizing this whole napping business, this restoration God gave me couldn’t be explained as something physical.
“Rest”…The absence of doing, and yet one of the hardest things for me to do.
“Rest,” He whispers tenderly over my heart. “Just be still, and know that I am God.”
