Rest is not a Place
Sometimes it feels like a noise army has been sent to attack me.You'd think the spa would be quiet. Right? That's what I think - calm environment, cozy robes, hot tea, tubs and towels, bath products made to be used in extreme excess... Well, the first thing I heard when I walked into the women's area of the spa on Monday, was an alarm. For 20 minutes, the alarm went off. The front desk let me know that because it was personal property, the alarm would just have to go off. Nevermind the alarm, I charged myself, I am at the spa.But the steam room was loud, the shower was loud, the jacuzzi was loud, the misting room was loud with voices. "Are they allowed to be this loud?" I asked the attendant. Even in the bath, baskets of towels rolled across tiled floors, friends chattered like birds on Saturday morning at 7 am on the only day of the month you can sleep in...And that's when I heard it: Rest is not a place.Wait, what? Of course rest is a place - We work hard, then we find a place to kick back and relax where no one or nothing can bother us, right? The spa is a place of relaxation, a calm place to rest! Honestly, I am partially ashamed to write this, because who complains about the spa?The point is, in our world today, everything fights for our attention, for our affection. Priorities become a pressing concern and if we're not careful our lives can be filled and cluttered with noise. Every day, there's relational and personal issues, problems to mediate, crisis that arise, accidents that happen, misunderstandings and confusion. Then there's our choice of media, our interruptions, and lots of opinions potentially driving our lives and certainly driving our culture. Noise. Lots and lots of noise.Some of the moms in my world put their babies to sleep with white noise - a bathroom fan on next to the bedroom, the sound of a hair dryer blowing on CD. The theory being white noise in the womb, so white noise on Earth helps the baby adapt to their new environment.How can a baby sleep with all that noise? How can we rest with all this noise in our world? I wonder if from the womb, God was aware of our need for quiet rest in the midst of noise. I wonder if He hard wired us in our mother's womb to rest in Him despite all the noise daily competing for our attention. I believe He's a good Father who knows the world we live in, knows everything we deal with daily, and also knows we have the capacity to sleep like a baby anyway.At the noisy spa, God taught me something I couldn't have seen on my own - Rest is not a place. Rest is in Him. Pretty soon after that whisper from heaven, I closed my eyes and entered His rest.
*Special thanks to our 2011 Fall Oasis Interns for the spa package!! Only you could teach me a lesson from heaven at the spa :) I love you and my new pedicure!