By Pastor Norma Malfatti
“Take a break …
Run away with us for the summer.
Let’s go upstate …
There’s a lake I know
In a nearby park.”
–Eliza to Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton: An American Musical
This snippet from Hamilton has been running through my head “non-stop” (pun intended) for the last week. I’m scheduled to take a sabbatical this summer and I cannot tell if this song is on mental repeat because the time is drawing near or if I’m just being reminded that breaks are good things. If I’m honest, it’s probably a little of both.
Growing up, I was always fascinated with God’s decision to rest after creating things for six days. What did God do when resting? Wasn’t God needed in caring for creation? If God was supposed to love us all the time and always hear and answer our prayers, what happened when God was resting?
“For God in the creation story, it seems that rest was not a pause for the sake of doing nothing but a time of reflection, gratitude, and blessing.”
My young mind could already see the contradictions in Scripture wanting to poke at them. I took seriously what my Sunday School teachers, pastors, and parents taught me – that the Bible is the source and norm of our faith. But if this were true, why did different parts of Scripture say opposite things, how was I to know which was right and which was wrong?
We know that Scripture was written by specific humans, inspired by God’s Spirit, at specific times in their lives as they sought to understand who God is. For the writer(s) of the creation story, they understood that part of who God, and what it means to create, is to rest. Genesis 2:2-4 tells us that God finished the work God had done, not completed all of the creating there was to do, but had finished the work thus far. When God rested, God blessed that day and made it holy.
IN A DISCUSSION with a friend about this, we wondered if resting was a creative act in itself or if resting was necessary for re-engaging creative work. In true Lutheran fashion we decided the answer was “yes.” For God in the creation story, it seems that rest was not a pause for the sake of doing nothing but a time of reflection, gratitude, and blessing. The rest was fertile ground for what was to come next – the ongoing and ever evolving relationship with humanity and all of creation.
“When God rested, God blessed that day and made it holy.”
So, what would it look like if we looked at rest like this? Not a moment of dropping onto the couch from exhaustion at the end of the night and flipping on mindless TV, but an opportunity to reflect and give thanks for all that was; a time to dream about what could be.
I’m not saying that your work, or mine, does not cause you to be bone-tired and that summoning up energy to reflect or dream seems out of reach. But, what if you did have that energy and space? What kind of creativity and possibilities might the Spirit stir up in you?