A Rested People—Sarah J. Hauser

by Sarah J. Hauser

“Are we allowed to say yes?” my husband asked.

We were driving home from some outing I can’t remember, our four kids strapped into the seats behind us in our minivan. We’d just received a text message from a woman at our church who regularly coordinated Meal Trains for anyone in need—those who had a baby, grieved a family death, had undergone medical treatment.

Technically speaking, we fit the description of a qualified meal recipient. My husband had recently torn his Achilles tendon, resulting in surgery. In the weeks following his recovery, he couldn’t put any weight on his injured leg, and then after that he would have to hobble around in a giant boot.

“I think so?” I answered, hesitant. Our situation wasn’t dire. We weren’t dealing with any true emergencies or trauma or profound grief. The story we were living felt more embarrassing than anything, an age-old tale of a man in his late thirties trying to keep up in a basketball game with the twenty-year-olds. Besides, my husband had a desk job, so he didn’t have to take off much work, and I was capable of caring for our kids, making meals, and dealing with our day-in-day-out responsibilities. We should be able to handle this on our own, I thought.

Except I was also really, really tired.

“You know what? Yes. We’re going to say yes. You just had surgery. And it’d be really helpful to not have to cook quite as much this week,” I told my husband.

Before long, we had people signed up to bring us tacos and pulled pork and pasta. For the next two weeks, dinner was delivered to our doorstep, no cost, no tips, no DoorDash required.

It was truly a grace that I didn’t have to stand in the kitchen scrubbing pots and pans after cooking a meal (especially because, as things often go, our dishwasher broke the same week). I didn’t even have to decide what to eat. Other people bringing meals can feel like a gamble, but even so, I did not have the mental energy to choose recipes or write down ingredients or shop for more than the bare essentials. Those meals helped me catch my breath and carved out a little more space for my husband to recover.

Those meals, and the people who brought them, gave us a chance to rest.

So many of us often think, “We should be able to figure this out on our own. We’re fine.” We resist offers for help, and we certainly resist asking. But then in the next breath, we can’t figure out why we’re so dang tired.

I wonder if at least some of our weariness is because we’ve forgotten that rest and community go hand in hand. Maybe we think it’s only acceptable to lean on others when we have no choice––when there’s an extended hospital stay or tragedy. But what moments of rest are we missing on an ordinary Tuesday because we don’t allow ourselves to depend on those around us? And what moments of rest might we be failing to offer to others before their circumstances become urgent?

From the very beginning of humanity, God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (English Standard Version). Yet so many of us believe, even subconsciously, that the answer to our weary woes is figuring it out on our own. But we were not created to be self-sufficient––only God gets that job.

In The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, Walter Breuggemann wrote, “Autonomy and self-sufficiency are finally postures of hopelessness in which free gifts are excluded and one is left to one’s own resources.” I’m all about accepting a challenge and learning how to do things on my own. We are called to be faithful to the work God has put in front of us and not shirk our responsibilities. Yet sometimes, the idea of “on my own” can become an idol, our own independence shaped into a golden calf. And when we fall down before that god, we miss out on the good gifts God wants to give us.

Rest and community are inextricably linked. Consider the Sabbath practices of the ancient Israelites. God’s people were to set aside one day a week to cease their regular work, because God modeled that pattern in creation when he rested on the seventh day. But another reason for observing the Sabbath, given in Deuteronomy 5:15, was to “remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

When God gave the law, both in Exodus and Deuteronomy, he gave it to a community of people. The practice of Sabbath was not merely a bunch of individuals taking a day off. Rather, Sabbath was a way the collective people of God remembered and demonstrated their redemption. The whole was far greater than the sum of the parts.

As the nations looked on, they were to be able to see a rested and redeemed people of God who refused to live their lives as slaves any longer. Even more than that, those in positions of authority in Israel were to protect others in their care from exploitation and overwork by making sure that even servants, sojourners, and livestock rested (Deut. 5:14).

If the world saw not just one individual or family, but the entire people of God, refusing to give into the hurried, harried, exhausting pace of the culture, wouldn’t they take notice? What would happen if the world saw that the church was the most rested people on earth? The church wouldn’t be without hardship or struggle, of course, but what impact could we have if God’s people ordered our lives, our businesses, our church programming, our calendar, our households in a way that actively resisted and rebelled against overwork––and then protected against overwork in the lives of others?

Understanding that rest is tied to community frees us to both give and receive help in order to rest. We can accept that Meal Train without hesitation because we were never meant to power through on our own. We can initiate a childcare swap so parents can get a couple hours off. We can pool our leftovers on a Sunday night with a friend so we don’t both have to cook. We can create a fund for single parents that provides them with finances for childcare or a night away at a hotel. We can ask for help before we’re at the end of our rope, and we can offer it before someone else is. Helping one another rest can and should be a normal part of living in Christian community.

When we consider rest within the context of community, we also then realize that we do not rest merely for our own benefit. I can all too easily think about how I’m going to spend my Sunday or finally get my moments of quiet. But rest is not just about me. We are a part of a larger body of believers meant to work and rest according to God’s design. When one part of the body is tired, it affects us all. When one part is limping, the others can offer support. Our individual acts of rest, whether they have to do with the Sabbath or other practices like solitude or silence, matter within the larger community of faith, a community charged with displaying our redemption to a culture that is restless.

Jesus stepped away from people in order to pray and practice solitude, and then he came back to serve and teach and heal. So, too, should we step away, not to numb or self-soothe, but to fill what’s empty so we can pour out into our families, neighborhoods, churches, and communities. Rested people help others rest.

In Celebration of Discipline: The Path To Spiritual Growth, Richard Foster wrote, “The fruit of solitude is increased sensitivity and compassion for others. There comes a new freedom to be with people. There is new attentiveness to their needs, new responsiveness to their hurts. Thomas Merton wrote, ‘It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers.’”

It’s not easy to practice rest in our fast-paced world. It’s also not easy to live in community. We each have our own unique responsibilities, families, budgets, and struggles, and sometimes it can seem far simpler to keep on keepin’ on, even when we’re utterly depleted.

But we are the people of God. We’re a people redeemed from slavery to sin. We’re people on our way to the Promised Land, to an eternal rest that cannot be taken away. As we depend on God and on others, we get to show the world that we live in a kingdom built not by how much we produce, but by an all-sufficient God. Together, we have the chance to demonstrate our redemption and the character of our Redeemer to a deeply weary world.

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Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living near Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and four kids. She is the author of All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody, 2023). Read more at sarahjhauser.com, check out her newsletter, or find her on Instagram (@sarah.j.hauser).

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