You know, it’s been years since I have have uttered those words, but they just seem so appropriate today. In fact, I think the last time I heard them was when my mother was still alive. In all honesty, I am so tired I can hardly stay awake. The last two days have been brutal. I am finally finished with my work here in Dallas and I just arrived in the Admiral’s Lounge in Terminal A of DFW, waiting to board the plane home in about an hour.
As you know, I rarely write in the middle of the day – I much prefer to write at night, but I am concerned that if I just sit here, I may fall asleep and I wouldn’t want to miss my plane. So, I decided to start on the post and see if I can get it done now while using the time to also commune with God.
The last several days have encompassed the annual Summit meeting we hold here in Dallas for one of my clients. It starts with dinner on Sunday evening, includes meetings all day on Monday that include intense mental concentration and everything revolves around technical stuff much too complicated for me to understand. That means I get worn out trying to stay with my colleagues who are so well versed in the subject matter.
They know that I am there as the operations and communications guy, but I want to make sure that I always attend because it is important to the team. The whole group only gets together once a year, from cities all across the United States, so it is critical to have time to reconnect and get up to speed on the personal lives of my teammates. While it is true that I travel to Dallas each month, I get together with the core team headquartered here in Dallas and so my opportunities to work with everyone else are few and far between.
It was good to see the others who also flew in for the Summit. We’re not especially close, but it is nice to touch base each year and hear what’s going on. That’s the social part – the work part is a while different thing. Because I get to work with some of the most savvy technical people in the country when it comes to the field of consumer electronics. They talk about trends, new products, changes in internal specifications and other obscure things such as what is happening in retail stores in Germany and Russia, or what types of companies in China are trying to avoid royalty payments to patent holders in the latest technology sectors.
I’m not wired the same way they are – and so I am exhausted at the end of the Summit. The others went home last night, but I stayed over to have discussions with the owner and the accountant about tax planning for year end as well as things we have to iron out here in the last month of the year. Can you believe it? We’re already in December and soon it will be 2013.
Anyway, you get the idea. I need rest – preferably sleep. Sunday evening was something of a disaster. A strange hotel, unlike the place I usually stay, and I was apparently allergic to the detergent they use on the sheets. I have been itching like crazy since Sunday, so I switched back to my regular hotel for last evening. It was like coming home, but on the road, if you know what I mean. I just entered the room and virtually collapsed. I stay there each month and they know about my problems with skin allergies so I pretty much get a hypo allergenic room that suits me just fine.
But the business part of the trip wasn’t over until I finished my work this morning. Now it is time to let down. I’m just ready to rest… I can’t help but think of the Scriptures that talk about entering God’s rest. That sounds real good to me right now. We’re told that the rest of believers is particularly satisfying – and that’s what I need. So rather than continue to write about it, let’s jump right to the verse of the day.
From Heb. 4:1, we are told, “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”
What the writer of Hebrews is trying to say here is that Jesus promises us the chance to enter into His rest – a fully satisfying kind of rest that is reserved for believers. And how does one become a believer? By acknowledging faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Now many people have heard that message, but they want it proven that God exists. And that is impossible to do through any of our earthly measures. That’s why we need faith – the acceptance of something that we “know” to be true when we can’t, in our humanity, prove it by any scientific means.
My encouragement today is to let you know that God is waiting for you to enter His rest as well. When you just can’t go another mile, when you are tired beyond words, when you can’t read the paper, or these words, because your eyes are burning so much there are tears running down your cheeks, God offers you rest. My prayer is that you will accept that invitation to rest under the wings of God. It is the kind of rest you will yearn for and never forget. That’s what I’m going to do on the flight home. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…