Morning Flight

Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian

November 3, 2022

Restless and Rested

“I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand I shall not fall. My heart, therefore, is glad and my spirit rejoices; my body also, shall rest in hope” (Psalm 16)

I have a certain restlessness instead of rest when it comes to bedtime, going to sleep. It’s a mental thing, somehow, about what I should be feeling when it comes to rest, and it’s retirement related, and it's end of life and shortness of life related. I do not want to go through my days wasting them, not being who I want to be, not doing what I want to do. The ability to rest for me comes when I am complete, not when I am only tired. But then there is the mourning over the brevity of it all, the fact that when doing things there will be an end to them and an end to me. So, an antidote to this restlessness is putting myself “out there,” taking steps into what concerns me (e.g. trying to make political support phone calls recently). If I am active I am more at rest.

What does it mean to say “my body rests in hope” (Psalm 16)? Hope here cannot be wishful thinking or fanciful dreams. Hope here means meaningful action. Then, think of it. When we say “our hope is in God” what are we, or what am I saying? The Bible’s God is not passive and blissful serenity, but rather active and righteously angry justice (“Smoke rose from his nostrils and a consuming fire out of his mouth; hot burning coals blazed forth from him” Psalm 18). Hope is not passive longing, but rather active love. So then, “my body rests” in active love, not passive dreaming. That all makes sense. I rest when I have done my job in justice and I am restless if I have not done my part. This is not the tyranny of needing to make a difference. It's certainly not about doing my part before God (what I do makes no difference to God, but all the difference in the world, literally. God, amazingly, pays attention to me from God’s point of view, which is unconditional love, and not from measurements of my merit. The attention to merit is a human construction projected on God). But also not doing my part before the success of the endeavor: what matters is being in the game, not whether my side wins. 

Today I will do my part. And I will rest. I will rest in hope.