The Rest We Desire
The rest we so desire can only be found in God. We would always want the next big thing. The next step on the corporate ladder. The next major achievement in our industry. When we desire something earthly, we believe that once we get it, our hearts will finally be at ease and all will be well. We believe fears and anxiety will leave. But do they really leave? No. It may take some time but that feeling of wanting the next thing will rear up again.
So, we’re in a constant state of wanting to get more. We’re living for what we can achieve. Christ said a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things that he owns. It goes beyond what we can achieve for ourselves in this time. We ask ourselves what we want to be remembered by and we spend years building legacies and systems that will outlive us.
When some influential people leave this earth, people speak at their funerals and describe that person based on what he/she achieved for his/her name. However, it is of more honor to be remembered as one who walked with God. Solomon, one of the richest men in the Bible, after acquiring wealth and women, came to the conclusion that, “indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)
Our hearts will only stop searching and longing for more when we find that rest in God. That peace that only God can give—the one that passes all understanding. No human being or material thing can give us peace and rest we desire. As long as we’re in this world, we will have trials and tribulations. That’s why we sometimes put too much pressure on people, expecting them to be like sponges that absorb all our excesses and give us peace of mind. We will meet frustrations and disappointments doing that, because we were all designed to live from God.
This world is filled with cosmic disappointments and because we have idolized a lot of things or people, we keep running into frustration. That job, car or house we want is always not all that. A time comes and we get bored and we desire something else. Only Christ is “all that”.
True peace and fulfillment come only from God. When we rest in Him, we find the wholeness we've been searching for.