the test of the commandment

The Sabbath is doing its appointed work in me today. As the sun sank past the corn fields I was restless and exhausted, sleepy but stressed. I have several assignments left to do in an impossibly short time period, and discouragement settled heavy as I discovered that I had lost all the notes I had made for writing a book critique due Sunday. Joshua was gone and I laid alone in the dark, unable to sleep and unable to rest in the Savior because every impulse in my body was saying

go! do it! work! pick it up! type it out! write it down! labor! accomplish!

but the commandment of God says

rest. stop. slow. quiet. remember Me. reclaim holiness.

 at which point I must decide if I will

• trust, and
• obey

which, as it turns out, is the exact same thing more often than not.

And in obeying the Lord's command to rest, I am forced to redefine what "okay" means. If I obey the Lord and the work doesn't get done, will I be okay? If I obey the Lord and my grade suffers and I disappoint people, will I be okay? Obeying the Lord for these 24 hours means letting go of my pride and self-sufficiency and illusions and recognizing that the world spins on regardless of my grades and that, in fact, I am still a whole person under His care.

And so in the Sabbath, God cures my anxious hurry by commanding me to stop. And in the quiet created by the recess of my labors He is able to remind me that the solution to my problem is not more productivity, but more Him.