Opinion

You shall find rest for your souls

Regular contributor Ian Boughton is encouraged by Jesus’s promise of rest, and find this an antidote for the urgency of today’s “Just do it” culture.

‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’ 
 
Those words were written by a Welsh poet, William Henry Davies.  They have often been credited to Wordsworth, but he had nothing to do with it.
 
It’s a great image, and yet most of us today seem to feel that we do not have the right to stand about and do nothing.  We feel we must be ‘doing something’, or we are wasting our precious time. 
 
The pressure to be ‘doing something’ is constantly forced on us by the influence of commercial players such as the famous Nike brand, with their slogan of ‘just do it!’   (The sports brand did not even make that one up – they stole it from the infamous last words of an American murderer, spoken to one of the death-row staff).
 
I’m not the only one who worries about taking time off to ‘do nothing’.  A writer on the Bible Notes website observed recently that: “we are reluctant to take the time to cease from activity… we feel like we are not being productive”. Yet, they argued, God gave us the useful and practical gift of rest, in that on the seventh day, the people were to stop their work and trust in the Lord for anything they needed. This, said the writer, “showed that the daily enterprises of life did not depend on them alone.”
 
I found this confirmed by reading another Christian philosopher who complained that for them, a ‘good day’ was defined by simply getting things ticked off on their to-do list, until they were shown the passage in Matthew concerning Jesus’ rhythm of life. Because he knew when to rest, he never seemed hurried, - he knew when it was time to withdraw from the ‘busyness’ of life, and even told the disciples to go to a desolate place and rest for a while, in what the writer described as ‘the unforced rhythms of grace’.  (Matt 11:28-30)
 
Does doing nothing actually help?  Have you ever found that when you are puzzling over some problem late in the day, you can go to bed and the solution appears to you in the morning? (Or wakes you up at some unearthly hour!)  It must have been the rest that cleared your head.
 
I have had a typical case this week. I stupidly committed to put together a quartet for a show in August, and then found it was a time when all my musician friends are either booked up or are away on holiday. During a prayer time, I said, quite light-heartedly: “what do I do about this, then?  I’ve really dug myself into a hole this time!” 
 
I worried about it for days, and then remembered the words of a not-very-good but surprisingly profitable thriller writer of the 60s and 70s, whose hero advocated the policy of ‘masterly inactivity’ – that is, when faced with a puzzle and seeing no solution, do nothing.  It baffles your rivals or enemies, clears your own head, and surprisingly, a solution may often present itself.
 
And after a day or two, guess what happened?  A couple of my very best associates said that they were, after all, available to play that show!
 
And so, whatever Nike may tell us, my attitude is no, let’s not ‘just do it’.  Let’s feel free to stand and stare, or if you like, meditate and reflect.  If we just stop and trust, an answer well may be given to us.

The photo of a North Norfolk beach is courtesy of Ian Boughton.  

Ian Boughton is a musician and author and retired journalist who lives in Dilham in Norfolk. 

The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive and good-natured debate between website users. 

We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. 

Click here to read our forum and comment posting guidelines