Rest
Photo Credit: Missional Wisdom Foundation
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused. Isaiah 30:15
His feet dragged through the sand. There was no reason to walk down into the valley. It hadn’t rained since he had last been there, and his sheep would find nothing but starving locusts. The ground was dry and bare, exhausted by the glare of the sun. His sheep meandered around him, looking for any escaped brush or blade, always aware of him. For he was their eyes. That is what it meant to be a shepherd. To look and see. To become aware over and over again.
Even when the stones looked the same.
Because they usually did. The stones and the bushes and the sand. They all sat silently, patiently or maybe impatiently, either way, they sat. Just like before. Only sometimes they could come alive with fangs and venom and a wounded sheep. They could hide the slashing tooth and the hungry jaw. To be a shepherd was to see what could be.
And sometimes what couldn’t be.
Because today the bush burned but didn’t. Today a voice called out for him to take off his shoes. Today the desert was called holy. How absurd. How unorthodox. How heretical. It just couldn’t be. This burning unburnt bush.
The prophet calls down the years and deserts of time: Return! Rest! Find strength. And our hearts are so weary, so bowed down, that we have lost the ability to see. The stones and the bushes and the sand overwhelm us. We want to look and see, but we are cast down but the sheer enormity of it all. The glare of sorrow and worry has worked its way to the pit of our minds, and our hearts and heads ache with it. How will resting help?
Take off your shoes.
Pause.
Sit down next to the impossible and take off your shoes. The sheep will wait; ruminating. There is mystery here. There is wonder here. There is rest here.
Writing Prompts:
Look what I found!
She had no idea what it meant…
What do you mean it isn’t…
There was a glorious tumult…
It used to be so…
If you look closer…
Everything I once knew about…