Rest

God promises to give us rest: come to me all who are weary, and I will give you rest.  Isn't that right?  As our daughter screams and rails upstairs against taking a nap, I think of how difficult life is for her (and everyone around her) when she's tired.  She's not unique.  Life is more difficult for me (and everyone around me) when I am tired, too.  What if God knows when we need rest - even when we don't?  What if he has sent us to a quiet place, and we respond with shrieks of 'but I don't want to sleep!'  or, even more likely in my case, 'I don't need to sleep!' - as if I ever know what it is that I need.

The problem, I think, with rest is that we are so utterly powerless when we are sleeping.  We certainly cannot control the world around us; we can't even control ourselves.  Our bodies move, our minds construct and deconstruct dreams, and we simply exist.  People can have fun without us, people can enter our home without our knowledge, and no one is listening to us.  Frankly, given those things, I'm surprised people sleep as much as they do.  Spiritual rest is not all that different.  We have to relinquish control in similar ways, and to equally terrifying extremes.  We cannot spiritually rest and worry.  We cannot spiritually rest and dictate outcomes.  Today as I prayed, I noticed I was giving God possible options.  He didn't have to do any of them, of course, but I wanted to make sure he'd thought of all of the possibilities.  I had to laugh at myself when I realized what I was doing.  As if I could think of a possibility God had overlooked.  What pomp.  I wasn't at rest.  I was pulling open my the door to my spiritual bedroom and shouting that I didn't need to sleep.

I am such a child, in all of the most unfortunate ways.