While I have many amazing memories of excitement and joy, the memories that hold fast and give the most comfort are those of rest. The moments of stillness and calm that draw my heart inward and find hope are the most provocative to me. The times sitting on the front porch with my great grandparents telling me stories of their childhood, or the rainy afternoons, curled in a rocker just watching it rain, or the sweet peace of the moments after my little one fell asleep eyelashes resting on cheeks. These moments are filled with such a rich awareness of God’s presence in my life. We all have need of rest. That time to rebuild, restore, heal up, and regain our strength. Sleep is built into our lives as a basic necessity, we cannot live long without it, our bodies begin to suffer after just one night of disturbance in our rest, and after a few with no sleep we begin to loose our grasp on our mental sanity. As a mom, I can definitely testify to the need for sleep! Nothing like a few nights of no rest to make me completely fall apart at the seams. If the whole of creation needs a time of rest, why wouldn’t I? Yet, it seems to be the most neglected part of our lives, we push back our days of rest into more activities, more accomplishments, more doing. 

   God gave us from the very beginning a day to rest, a time to recover. 

By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. 

Gen 2:2-3

His rest becomes the example by which to live. 

   Islam has no such rest. Muslims have no day of rest, no time to sit back and rest in the arms of the Father. Their doctrine is only to continue slaving away, every day is a day of labor to try hard to satisfy the capricious Allah. Early in the morning, the call to prayer pulls them from their sleep, five times a day every day calling them to stop to pray and remember their status as slaves. How different is this from Jesus who called to us, 

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matt 11:28-29

Rest for your souls. How beautiful that sounds right about now? The bone weary tired that we have all come to can be given over and we can find rest for our souls. 

So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. 

 Heb 4: 9-11

It is our choice to enter into His rest, to rest from the works just as God rested from His. In that rest we have one responsibility, simply to hold fast to Him. In that obedience nothing we do is labor but joy. We are so thankful to be living in His rest, but our hearts yearn to see Muslims knowing His rest as well. We see them laboring, trying, earning points, traveling great distances to do what they think might please Allah. Everyday pulled from sleep to be called into slavery. Will you pray with us to see them coming to the Lord for rest? To give them rest for their souls? We thank you for joining with us to see them come! 

Angela Abraham