July 8 - Rest and Hope

July 8 – Rest and Hope

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5)

I wonder what it takes to rest our souls?  I have found that a minimum of eight hours of sleep is required to rest my body.  I used to try to get away with 3-4 hours and think I was doing well, but come to find out, it was never enough. 

With only a little sleep each night, I found that I was always desperate for quiet time, for peace, for rest.  Weekends came and went too quickly, I spent much too much time in the evenings trying to regain my sanity after a long day that had nearly trampled me.  The nights that I had time to sleep were filled with many things as I attempted to manage the days.  Sleep and rest were simply not part of my life.

Exhaustion supplanted sanity and I never seemed to be fully myself.

If physical exhaustion can do that to me – what does spiritual exhaustion do?

Psalm 37:7 says, “Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him.”

Resting in the Lord just isn’t that difficult, even though we try to establish guidelines and rules around it.  It simply means allowing ourselves to be open to Him, in peace and quiet.  We don’t need to chatter our prayers at Him, hoping He will respond, but we need to rest and find quietness within ourselves.  There in that quiet, still place, we can rest in His love. 

Restoration comes with rest.  Hope can be found once again when we are content and confident that the Lord cares for us.