By Ann Farabee

Rest? That short four letter word sure can be elusive.

My favorite definition of rest is to cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or to recover strength.  Most any definition that includes the words relax, refresh, and recover is a word I want to include in my vocabulary and in my life. Rest is significant in the Bible as it is found over 250 times.

Many of my readers are aware that there are four of us living in our home – two almost adult grandsons, my husband, and me. At any given moment in any given day, there is the likelihood that there would be others in our home, as well. I wouldn’t want it to be any other way. People hanging out together from a barely walking infant to a barely walking 70-ish year old. That was a joke – Charles exercises every day.  We have bonus family, too, who are the students I tutor in my home.

What a great life! Family is around often, and I also still get to be around my students, even though I am retired.

No matter how hard I work every day, if I am at home, I am at rest.

I do not count work done at home as being work.

Being home feels like being at rest – in spite of the work that has to be done.

It is home because it is the place I am most comfortable.

There are a couple of chairs in my home that I think each person understands are my chairs..

There is a blanket that is taken from room to room, but only belongs to me.

No one would even think about using my pillow. One year I decided that I was going to buy myself a really good pillow, and I have had no regrets, and I dare say that no one else has ever laid their head on it.

Even though I share my home with family, there are some things that belong just to me.

That pillow. That footrest. Those bedroom shoes. The flannels. The chair. My place at the table. Even if a storm cloud is hanging over my life, if I am in one of my spots, I am at peace.

Because – I am at home.

I can cuddle up beside anyone who lives there.

I can be myself in every way.

I can be at rest – even when I am busy.

Maybe that is why Dorothy tapped her heels together 3 times and dreamed of home as she said, “There is no place like home.”

But – the rest we can attain at home – is in no way comparable with the rest we can attain in God’s Presence.

One recent Sunday afternoon, I laid down for a minute. Yes, just for a minute. 

I knew it was too late to take a nap, so I was just going to rest. No one else was around, but when I closed my eyes, I felt a mighty wind enter the room. It was rest of a different kind – it was the kind of rest that only the Holy Spirit can send our way. With my eyes closed, Jesus came to my mind, and I began to focus only on Him.The wind blew – not the wind outside my window – but the wind in my soul. How can it be a mighty rushing wind and it come in like a soft whisper to my soul? I was at rest in the presence of God. I never went to sleep, but my mind, body, and spirit was at rest. My focus was only on the presence of the Holy Spirit living within me – speaking tenderly to my heart in that quiet moment of the peace of God within me.

Quiet moments? We sure do need them.

Matthew 11:28 says this:

Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened. I will give you rest.

Ready? Set? Rest.