Brett McCracken’s new book on rest is really about the gospel. “Jesus’ goal in rest is not just to give you a break. It’s to give you himself.” He says, “Come to me” (Matthew 11:28). And that invitation “captures the heart of what the gospel is and does.” (p. xiv). McCracken adds, “The gospel is rest.”
The book is entitled, The Wisdom of Sleep: How Rest Reveals God’s Truth and Revives Weary Souls. Sleep is tremendously beneficial; it replenishes the body’s resources in numerous ways. And such gain is “not something we can work at or earn but rather the passive activity of stillness and deathlike sleep” (xvii).
“Sleep and rest are … God-designed, built-in teachers of humility” (8). Through sleep God whispers that doing isn’t everything. Sometimes we just need to be still (Psalm 46:10). Of course, in achievement culture, rest is seen as weakness. “Limitlessness is an intoxicating sales pitch. It has been since Eden” (17).
McCracken speaks of both physical and spiritual rest. To those who burn the midnight oil he says, “Habitual devaluing of sleep is unbecoming for Christians. We are not machines… Rest is not merely utilitarian. God created it for a reason” (19). We need its regular reminder of our limits and his care.
When God rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:3), he certainly had no need to stop. “He had limitless capacity to keep going, doing, and creating.” But he stopped. “Redemptive history is, in many ways, a history of God’s rest and our relationship to it. In the fall, we lost access to God’s rest … in the gospel, we gain eternal access to God’s rest” (101). “We achieve rest insofar as we know in our gut that God has already achieved rest for us” (106). In a sense, then, sleep is a parable of salvation.
So rest isn’t just useful. “It’s meaningful. It’s a beautiful, mysterious key that unlocks bigger truths and connects many dots in God’s design” (170). Yes, the gospel is rest.
