His Part and Ours: His Presence
Exodus 33:14
Al Hunter was a fellow member of FPC and fellow lover of Christ. Al was an engineer, an outdoorsman moved by the wonder of creation, adventure of creation, and Al loved his family, friends, and his wife of 56 years Sandy. Al also enjoyed some obscure literature. He turned me on to this book by a guy named Sidlow Baxter. “His Part and Ours.” As is evident in the title, the book is broken into two parts: God’s part is the first half and Our part is the second half. Al wanted to take on a writing project simplifying and improving the thoughts of this little book. “My Presence” about the Presence of God, is Chapter 3.
What is it about the presence of God? I believe if we search our heart, soul, mind, etc… we desire, above all else, to lean in and experience the presence of God. In my faith journey, I have heard and read about this Presence: Experiencing God’s unconditional love and grace, feeling His pleasure when I follow my calling or love my neighbor; when I employ the gifts to do the work (or the play) for which I was made. However, until this scripture, I have not thought much about God’s presence providing REST. In Exodus, God said to Moses, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
The Author, Sidlow Baxter, in his book, His Part and Ours, makes the point on this scripture that there are two types of rest: 1. Rest AFTER toil and 2. Rest IN toil. At reading this and sitting with the idea for a couple of days, I noticed an illustration of the different kinds of rest in the Lyrics of one of my favorite U2 Songs. “All I Want Is You.” In this song, Bono belts out about removing the toil, making life easy, or making the problem go away in order to have rest AFTER toil:
“You said you’d give me highway with no one on it, treasure just to look upon it, all the riches in the night”
Then he croons the stanza about rest IN toil:
“You said you’d give me eyes in a moon of blindness, river in a time of dryness, harbor in the tempest”
When I competed as a distance runner, I was lazy. I rarely set the pace, I rarely led the pack of runners, but my gift was to wait until a specific moment in the race and “kick” or markedly pick up the pace to the finish line, hopefully passing the competition. The challenge in a good “kick” is to start as far from the finish line as possible and sustain the pace all the way to the end. This long kick is a challenge, it is hard to push through the pain when you cannot yet see the finish line. It is easier to kick when you know the rest is coming. It is hard to believe rest will come when deep in the toil. I believe I was good at this race tactic, because my desire for rest, after the toil, is so strong. I really struggled with the middle laps of a race, because the oxygen debt, the lactic acid in my muscles, the pain and toil, felt like it would never end. However, I could convince myself from quite a distance out, that the finish line was near and therefore kick earlier than others.
I wish this mind game was possible in life. Unfortunately, most valuable endeavors in my life don’t have a defined finish line; there is no end to the toil. It is not hard to find less valuable stuff to toil and finish. I mowed the lawn yesterday and it felt good to get done…and rest. However, appropriately loving Lisa, Annika, Nic, and David? No finish line. My work, my calling, is important, but rarely do I have a sense of completion or closure that allows me to stop and rest AFTER the toil.
I watched the movie Lone Survivor the other night. In the middle of a gunfight, surrounded by an overwhelming force and facing almost certain death, the actor playing Matt Axelson confesses to Marcus Luttrell, “If I die on this mountain, I want my wife to know I died with my brothers, with a full heart!” There is a sincere peace that washes over this soldier in the moment, while the bullets fly. A Harbor in the Tempest.
How do we find God’s rest IN the toil? God’s promise in the Exodus scripture is, “In MY Presence…I will give you rest!” How do YOU seek God’s presence? I often seek God’s presence in a run or a bike ride through the woods or along the water, but what if the toil is so near that I cannot stop and seek even a short refuge? How do I find God’s rest in a moment? Perhaps it is just in the knowing and remembering that the presence exists. I know for me, in the depth of stress and anxiousness, I often lean into the stress rather than toward God. God’s presence doesn’t change simply because I forget. His rest is always available to us, whether we remember to seek the harbor or toss in the waves of the storm.