Rest

The possibilities of being and doing

eejoseph, , , ,

WHOEVER WROTE THIS DESERVES A MEDAL!

What do they mean by: “You Cannot Retire”?  Let me begin by saying the contrary: anyone can retire., and the contradictions of being and doing are 70 times 7.

The genius likens people to

  • Stars
  • Rivers
  • Seasons
  • The earth

The so-called conclusion based on observation is a lot of hot air, because human beings are unequivocally not like earth, seasons, rivers, and stars. Read now this genius argument that people cannot retire.

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You Cannot Retire

I have come to this conclusion, not just from books or sermons, but from the steady drumbeat of real life. From watching friends, colleagues, family members, great men—men of wisdom, strength, and wealth—choose to retire… only to quietly fade into sickness, into sorrow, and then, far too soon, into the arms of death.

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Retirement, in the way the world understands it, is not rest—it is resignation. Resignation from purpose. From duty. From the creative tension that keeps the spirit vibrant and alert.

We are taught that everything in Creation is in motion. Motion is life. Motion is law.
Look around you:

*. Rivers flow ceaselessly—wherever the current breaks off, water *. stagnates and death settles in.
*. The Earth rotates without pause.
*. The seasons march in perfect obedience.
*. Even the great stars above us dance in eternal cycles, never swerving, never stalling.

Man is no exception.

We were not made to rest. We were made to strive, to build, to create, to solve, to nurture.
The moment we choose to withdraw from life’s current, to step out of the stream and into the stagnant pool of ‘retirement,’ something begins to wither—first in the mind, then in the body, then in the soul.

You cannot retire from being alive.

What is needed is not retirement—but redirection. A man may leave a career, yes, but he must never leave his calling. He must find another field where his hands are needed, where his thoughts must still labor, where his spirit can continue to serve.

Inactivity is an invitation to decay.

A man must have something that:

*  Keeps him curious,
*  Keeps him responsible,
*  Keeps him accountable,
*  Keeps him needed.
For as long as breath remains, there must be engagement—with God, with purpose, with people, with destiny.

Even a candle in its last inch must burn with dignity, casting light until the final flicker.
Even in old age, the tree must still bear fruit—or at least cast shade.
Even at sunset, the sky must still paint itself with glory.

I speak this not only for myself but for all who may be tempted to think their work is done because the world says “retire.”

No. You may rest. You may change lanes. But you must never stop moving.

To stop is to rust.
To rust is to rot.
And to rot is to die—before your time.

So keep moving, my brothers & sisters. Keep thinking. Keep building. Keep giving. Keep creating.
Keep becoming.

That is the law. That is the way. That is life.

That is the end of the medal winning  wisdom. Now, hear me out.

The mixture of nonsense with truth never works

We were made to rest. We were made to strive, to build, to create, to solve, to nurture. The pattern of human life is work then rest.

What Christian is going to believe that we were not made to rest, to pause, to cease? How many people do you know that are strivers, builders, creators, [problem]-solvers, and nurturers? If these activities are the basic definitions of humanity then humanity is an abject failure. Apparently, we do not have enough nurturers, solvers, creators and builders. Mankind has a creative phase followed by a maintenance phase.

Last inch without end

The genius proposes that “Even a candle in its last inch must burn with dignity, casting light until the final flicker”.  So why should a physician not park his stethoscope, a painter park his brushes, a fisherman park his nets and boats, or a farmer park his hoe, pruning hooks and sickles? We recognize that retirement is not a time to keep doing all the things and definitely a time to scale back anything we choose that is not an essential accessory for optimal living.

Sabbath is not a sign?

eejoseph, , , ,

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8a) could have been the next shortest commandment behind the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth with two words each.  The Sabbath command could have been four Hebrew words, but we’re not telling God what to write, right? I like poking around in the Decalogue because I am still looking for the good news it is said to contain.  I kid you not, a man did write a book entitled “Good News from Sinai”. I can barely crack a smile at his transparent rebellion. I suspect we will never find the life giving terms of the glorious gospel or the majesty of the apostolic letters of Christ’s witnesses in the Ten Commandments.  Of all the things that the Sabbath might be in the spiritual realm one has to be convinced that it is not from or of heaven a day, a sign, and a symbol: anything else will tend to serve man’s Idolatry-prone intelligence.

Sabbath from shadow to spotlight

Real theologians do not speculate.  They imagine what the Scripture says until it has nothing to do with the Christ Event.  It is a profound irony in fact that the command in the Sinai Covenant that establishes Sabbath definition and regulation contains eight (8) verbs. Opinion varies about what (1) remembering and (2) day holiness really are and the number eight is not going to end well if those actions mentioned give rise to activities which are to be monitored.

Remembering and holiness

  • remember the day, strictly covenantal
  • keep sabbath holy, exclusively human
  • sanctify sabbath, exclusively God’s

The pattern of the fourth commandment in the Ten Words is unique.

  • This WORD departs from the simple pattern, “you shall not”.
  • It has several clauses
  • It is flooded with verbs

Here are the clustered verbs

  1. Remember, זכר, zakar
  2. Keep holy; קדש, qadash, same as SANCTIFY from “Then God blessed the seventh day and SANCTIFIED it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:3, NASB)
  3. Labour, abad, עבד, work, essentially serve
  4. Do, asah, עשה
  5. Make, asah, עשה
  6. Rest, shabbat, שבת
  7. Bless, ברך, barak
  8. Make holy; same as SANCTIFY from Genesis 2:3

We know what happens to the guy who forgets that Friday sunset marks the arrival of the Lord’s Sabbath?  His hoarded food spoils and if he needs a fire he cannot afford to start one and he had better not gather sticks to make one.  I have never heard anyone make a serious offer of bringing Sabbath law to the profile of a perpetual statute.  Sabbath law, beginning with sunset to sunset, does not even apply in the natural terrestrial sense, given the varying lengths of days and the sometimes endless day and endless night for months at a time. What is right and equitable with no sunset and no sunrise?  More to the point of righteous behavior and the apprehension of violators of the law, we must in choir what does the church do when someone is found violating the Sabbath profaning the Sabbath come and is there anyone exempt as the priest were in Old  and New Testament times?

Did God not know that priests and Levites were going to profane the Sabbath on a weekly basis with no accusations or allegations of wrongdoing? How could he not? But who would have thought that a Jew could say he is the Sabbath’s Lord, and portray himself as legitimately working every Sabbath without apology?

None of us could have imagined either of those scenarios but one thing is clear, Sabbath belongs to the festivals, to the moedîm (Genesis 1:14).  It is no secret that the Sabbath is proclaimed as a festival (Leviticus 23), one of the rudimentary practices of the juvenile phase of human development (Galatians 4).

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. (Galatians 4:9-11)

Quit fanning the ashes

Uncleanness contracted from sitting where a menstruating woman had been sitting and waiting for sunset to remove one’s uncleanness is not a thing, neither is a symbol of things to come, like a festival or eating roasted goat meat ever going to be a primary moral obligation. One does not fan ashes to start a fire.  How many times do we have to be told that the seventh day Sabbath is a sign? God’s rest is not umbilically tied to a weekday and a Sabbath is not a sabbatismos – σαββατισμος – (Hebrews 4:9).  No one has to strive to have a weekly Sabbath; it comes naturally at the end of the week,  and furthermore, it comes every day as night falls. Spiritual rest is guaranteed to all who come to Christ for refuge.   Who is so deceived as to believe that anything that lasts for 24 hours, like a festival, can compare to the unending holy presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer or to the rest that Christ gives here and now to the weary and heavy laden?  Not me. Why anyone?

Thus begins the sages’ folly

eejoseph, , , ,

Make the employer an employee?

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.
But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.”

Matthew 12:1-2

What madness streams from unrepentant hearts!

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The Lord’s contemporaries invented a controversy about the sabbath because they were unaware  of the difference between a weekday and God’s means of refreshing the human race.  The sabbath as a sign in ancient Israel exposed to the light (a) the decree of death (b) the continuing imprisonment of the human race, (c) the reality of labour and (d) the rest yet to be bestowed by God in person. Who needs a sign when the reality is present?

Yeshua made the Sabbath, Joshua lead to rest, but Yeshua has the rest we need and can get only from him.  The rest that God gives to working people – the labour force – is a 24hour deal.  We are so fortunate to have, in many cases, 48 hours every week.  The rest God gives to the busy and burdened is in His Son.

The unemployed and disabled have a rest period too; every day.  Does rest have a better face than “pause from creating “? Does rest have a better face than “land to call my own”?  Yes.  Yes.

Rest denied the unbelieving (death in the desert)


3) For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, “As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.

Rest shared without charge (His) at creation)

4) For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”;

Rest offered the people in the land of rest/promise

5) and again in this passage, “They shall not enter My rest.”

Hebrews 4:3-5

Shut out for the common interest

Living for ever is not natural and Adam’s death proves it.  The opening of the prison and the release of the Holy Spirit are decreed and carefully put on the timetable.

Spirit not given until Yeshua’s glorification

But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

John 7:39

Shut out with purpose

22) Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”– 23) therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24) So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

Genesis 3:22-24

Access to life is the core of Messianic revelation. That Christ gives full and abundant life is beyond question. The life is rest, pardon, and fellowship with the heavenly Father.

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