# Rest A WORD FROM A DOCTOR Language: en Author: by Vincent “John” Waldron MD Gladys, VA Original issue: The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Winter 2021, Number 4 Source pages: 28–31 Read article: Original PDF: Winter\-2021\-Remnant\(3\)\.pdf [The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Winter 2021]() I rolled over in bed, listening to the sound of my pager going off\. It couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes since I had dropped into bed from my last admission\. I looked at the number on the pager\. Yes, it was the Emergency Department again\. I attempted to rub the sleep out of my eyes and stir my still sleepy brain to wakefulness\. I picked up the phone and dialed the ER\. “Hey,” the ER doctor said\. “I’ve got two admissions for you\.” “Oh,” I said sleepily\. “You sound tired,” he said, jokingly\. I **was** tired\. After graduating from Medical School, doctors go through an intense training period called residency\. The first two years of that training period involved overnight calls in the hospital\. It wasn’t unusual to put in one hundred hours at the hospital in a week’s time\. Even when we weren’t on call, the days started early and went late\. I often fought sleep as I was driving home from the hospital\. I certainly learned a lot during that time, but I am also glad that those days are behind me\. Fatigue is part of the human condition\. Everyone has had times when they struggled with tiredness\. Maybe it was due to a job that needed to get done, a long trip, or sleepless nights due to a new baby in the family—whatever the difficulty, we determinedly push ourselves to make it through these challenging times\. From our childhood days we are taught that work is important\. We need to be responsible and take care of the tasks that are set for us to do\. Work is ordained by God\. In Genesis Chapter 2, God gave Adam the task of caring for the Garden of Eden\. Later, in Deuteronomy 5:13, the Israelites were commanded to do all their work in six days and then rest the seventh day\. The New Testament gives a couple of more reasons to work\. We are to work so we can provide for our families \(see II Thessalonians 3:10\)\. In addition, we are to work so we can give to others who are in need \(see Ephesians 4:28\)\. God expects us to work and that we do it in a way that will glorify Him\. However, we also have need of rest, which God made provision for as well\. ## God Exemplified Rest in the Creation *And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made\. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made –Genesis 2:2\-3\.* When God created the universe, including the earth and all it contains, it took Him just six days\. Since God is God, we can be certain that He wasn’t tired at the end of this work\. Yet, despite that fact, He took a day of rest and set it apart\. He did it as an example for us\. Even though the law of the Sabbath would not be instituted for at least two thousand years, the precedent was set in Creation… Rest one day a week\. ## God Mandated Rest in the Law Perhaps the thing that comes to mind first is the Sabbath Day laws that were given in Exodus 20:8\-11\. It was specifically commanded that the people were not to work on the Sabbath\. And further, they were not to cause other people to work either\. Another law which seemed very much focused on the need for rest was the Year of Jubilee\. In Leviticus 25, this law mandated that every seven years the land was to lie fallow for the whole year, slaves were to be released, land was to revert to its original family’s ownership, and debts were to be cancelled\. Within the Jubilee commands were certain promises\. There was the promise of freedom—no matter how bad things had been the previous six years there would be a reset\. It was a promise of inheritance—the things that had been lost and sold would be reclaimed\. It was a promise of abundance—*And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years –Leviticus 25:20\-21\.* Most of all, it was a promise of rest from labor—for the people and the land\. These commands were not put on the people to afflict them\. Rather, God gave them knowing that without them His people would not rest enough and would not take enough time to focus on Him, their Creator\. Each one of us needs times of rest, but we need to understand that keeping the Sabbath is not simply about abstinence from work\. Our efforts at keeping the Sabbath must include both rest and worship and it must be emphasized with the presence of God in our lives, without distraction\. ## The New Testament did not Change the Need for Rest One of the verses that comes to my mind when I think about rest, is a promise that Jesus gave\. *Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest\. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls\. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light –Matthew 11:28\-30\.* The biblical book of Hebrews also speaks of the importance of rest and of our entering into God’s rest\. *There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God\. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his\. *Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief –Hebrews 4:9\-11\.** It is important to see that the New Testament concept of rest is more than simply time off from work\. True biblical peace is intrinsically intertwined with the concept of peace, even in the midst of a chaotic world\. *Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you\. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid –John 14:27\.* Jesus gave peace to His followers that allowed them to be at rest, even when they were dealing with high levels of stress\. This is a blessing, for it is not enough simply to take time off from our normal work\. We need to have that peace and calm which a connection with Jesus offers\. Without *…the peace of God, which passeth all understanding… –Philippians 4:7*, our time off will be just as unrestful as our time at work\. It is clear that God wants us to rest\. He knows that we need it, not just for spiritual reasons, but also for our physical health\. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* The folks in charge of the French Revolution made an attempt to eliminate all the institutions of the past\. It was a particularly godless endeavor and among other things, the new government decided to “reform” the calendar\. In 1793, they established a ten\-day work week\. Each month would have three weeks with one rest day in each of these ten\-day weeks\. Their goal, among other things, was to eliminate all religious holidays and the celebration of Sunday as a day of rest\. They believed that more work would be done by having fewer days of rest each month\. This created a huge headache for watchmakers\. They needed to somehow make watches that would support the details of these new decrees—each day would be ten hours long, each hour would contain one hundred minutes, and each minute would be 100 seconds long\. It turned out to be a disaster\. The people hated the changes and productivity dropped considerably across France\. Finally, in 1806, Napoleon abolished it and went back to the old calendar and the system of Sunday days of rest\. This scientific “experiment” was over\. It turns out that people need times of rest and recharging and that a seven\-day week with one day off to rest is not just a Christian concept, it is something that is necessary for health and wellbeing\. The Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin, also tried a similar experiment of eliminating Sunday rest, with similar results\. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* The week, as God created it, \(with one day in seven for rest\) is necessary for us to remain productive\. ## Rest Reduces Inflammation Part of the problem that modern people face is that they deal with high levels stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol\. These hormones increase blood pressure and pulse rates\. They also increase levels of inflammation in our bodies\. Chronic inflammation is not healthy, but fortunately, rest really seems to help bring those hormone levels down a lot\. A good night of sleep is essential for healing, precisely because it turns down these hormones and allows healing of overworked nerves and tissues\. Autoimmune diseases and pain levels improve when people get adequate levels of sleep\. Blood pressure and heart conditions also benefit when a person gets adequate amounts of restorative sleep\. ## Rest Allows for Healing Exercise is a good thing\. Doctors recommend doing regular cardiovascular exercise because it is healthy for our hearts, minds, and overall wellbeing\. It is not wise to exercise every day\. It too, raises stress hormone levels and does not give our bodies adequate times to heal\. People who exercise too frequently and with too much intensity are much more likely to end up with nagging injuries, joint and muscle pain, and fatigue\. One study found that it takes 72 hours after doing weight training for muscles to fully recover\. People who exercise ideally need one to two days off a week to let their bodies recover from the activity\. The harder you are training, the more you need those times of rest\. Even someone who is training intensively for something like a marathon needs to take periodic days with no running or they will injure themselves\. ## Rest Decreases Pain Levels There have been many studies that looked at people’s reports of sleep and looked at things like chronic pain and tension headaches\. At least 50 percent of people with insomnia also have chronic pain\. Of course, it could simply be that people with chronic pain don’t sleep as well as people who don’t have that\. There have been several studies that looked at people’s pain tolerance after sleep deprivation\. They found that even a single night of sleep deprivation was enough to make people feel pain more acutely\. ## Rest Improves Our Immune Systems There have been several studies that looked at function of different parts of our immune systems and found that they work better when study participants have adequate levels of sleep\. Probably the fact that inflammation levels are higher when we don’t rest, increases the risks of infection\. When we push ourselves too hard without rest it is hard on our immune systems\. On the other hand, the best way to recover is to make certain that we get sufficient rest\. There are many other things that rest does\. It helps improve mood\. It can help with academic performance and memory tasks\. As with all things, moderation is key\. Someone who does nothing but rest and sleep, is not going to have any better function than someone who sleeps well for seven hours a night, nor will they be very productive\. There are some basic rules that can help us with times of rest\. ## Rest Regularly The message of the Sabbath is that we need to take regular, short periods of time to rest\. The Jubilee Years tell us that we need less frequent, longer times to recharge\. It takes effort and scheduling to make certain that these times are truly restful\. Maybe it is a bit like a car\. You can only drive so far on a tank of gas\. If you always wait until the warning light turns on to fill up that tank, eventually you will have this happen when you are too far from a gas station to fill up before you run out of gas\. There is never a good time to run out of gas\. In the same way, we need to periodically recharge our spiritual, emotional, and physical batteries\. There is no reason to wait until warning signs show up that we desperately need to take a break\. ## Rest Takes Preparation The story of the gift of manna in Exodus 16 tells us that manna came every day\. The people could not keep it for a second day because it would spoil\. However, on Fridays, they were to gather extra since the next day was a day of rest and no manna came on the Sabbath\. Those who had not gathered extra the day before went hungry\. In the same way, it takes preparation to have these sorts of times\. It won’t be easy, but it is important\. ## Do Healthy Things With Your Rest There is a tendency when people are under stress to eat unhealthy things\. When people are exhausted, they don’t usually feel like exercising or taking walks\. These are the sorts of things that can really help recharge us, both physically and emotionally\. Once again, this takes some effort, but choosing healthy options is important for our well\-being\. ## Focus on God I have left this till the last, but it is the most important aspect of rest\. True rest grows, not out of medication or even multiple vacations, but out of a heart that is filled with peace\. The peace which passes understanding comes from a heart that is focused on God\. Our times of prayer and Bible reading should be times of rest\. If we can eliminate distractions and the challenges of our work and home life and train our gaze on the One who matters most, we will receive a real blessing and the recharging that our spirits need\. I am afraid that many people struggle to find rest because they are not truly at peace\. *Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief –Hebrew 4:11\.* The rest here is one that is promised to those who persevere and receive God’s peace\. ## Conclusion Life is about balance\. There are times when we need to work and there are times as well when we should rest\. Figuring out this balance is the challenge which each of us faces\. What is certain, is that every 24\-hour day will be completely full by the time we get to the end of it\. God sees us and our limitations and desires for us to achieve this balance between our work and our times of rest\. If we can only focus ourselves on Him, we will receive guidance in this balance\. Most of all, we will receive a peace that is without price, that will allow us to find rest—even during a storm\. ![Sunset over calm water and a dark shoreline]() ![A calm blue sea beneath a pink and orange sky]() ### Endnotes https://pubmed\.ncbi\.nlm\.nih\.gov/12741861/ https://www\.ncbi\.nlm\.nih\.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046588/ https://www\.ncbi\.nlm\.nih\.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256323/ ## Magazine citation - [Sunset over calm water and a dark shoreline](): Adobestock\.com - [A calm blue sea beneath a pink and orange sky](): Adobestock\.com