To Rest in God

A meditation on work and comfort, invoking the example of
St. Augustine

“I find no rest until I rest in Thee.”  

This most quoted phrase of  St. Augustine (Confessions: I,1) eloquently encapsulates humanity’s passionate quest for beauty, and the simple answer discovered after a long life of searching. In his confessions, Augustine describes his tireless pursuit of pleasure in his youth, yet nothing sufficed to grant him the satisfaction and rest he sought. He offers himself as a case study for the pursuit of such desires as fame, wealth, pleasure and sex, to all of which Augustine honestly confessed. Even his quest for knowledge he counted among his sins, having sought wisdom for reasons of ego and power.

Deeply he regrets not to have rested sooner in the love which constantly reached out to him both from God and from his devoted mother. In his old age he looks back on much of his life as an experience wasted, when the answer to his desire was so simple. His tardiness is one common to humanity, when we think we will have time to think of loftier goals later in life, or put off charity for awhile to follow our own desires.

But why should we wait to experience such rest, such comfort as only the God of love can offer us? Think of the pain and suffering that can be wrought upon us without notice, through nature, war, or cruelty. Where will we be if we rely but on our own ability to comfort ourselves? Once Augustine discovered the comfort of divine love he could hardly comprehend why he wasted so much time in distracting pleasures. “Wherefore delay,” he asked, “to abandon worldly hopes, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?” (Conf. VI,19)  Indeed what reason could we have to wait? The desires which we prioritize over God will only disappoint. God has the sublimest love and most peaceful rest to offer us, if we will only accept it.

Rest, or what we also call comfort, is one of the primary goals of the human temperament. Yet we insist on distracting ourselves with pleasures that really give no comfort at all. Just as Augustine busied himself with all manner of selfish sins and finally relinquished his pleasure in deprecating self-pity, so we too prefer distractions over focus, comfort over work, thinking it will give us rest. Gratefully should we heed the old scribe’s warning and cease to seek rest in aught but love.

Distraction is the opposite of meditation and prayer. Yet we long for distraction as the alternative to thoughts which we might find difficult. We fear the true comfort that comes from giving ourselves up to the embrace of God. So we dominate our minds with distracting pleasures even though they choke out the meditation that could teach us true happiness. We are distracted by the false comfort of empty-mindedness. When we are plunged into suffering, we blame God for the loss of comfort, even while shunning the comfort of God’s love. The worst consequence of this is to keep us from our deeper desires, our meditation and prayer, and the work which is our life’s purpose.

Comfort, like all our other pleasures, and all the beauties we seek in our lives, is a wonderful thing, but it cannot be had in excess until we learn to rest in the perfect love of God. What we think of as comfort should be reserved as a reward for work well done. Work is our act of love and union with all of humanity. Comfort without work is a hollow pleasure, infused with guilt. But if we are working, marching forward in the purpose of our lives, comfort is the respite that gives us strength: the well by which we pause to quench our thirst, only to continue the pilgrimage of our soul. We would rightly question anyone who waits constantly at the well, fearing to go on lest he should be thirsty again. And thus, in his comfort he never moves forward. Rather, we must trust that another oasis waits at the end of our day’s journey, for God placed our respites where we need them. Who would wait at the desert well, drinking until it runs dry only to find that his feet have lost the ability to go on?

If we encounter a well of comfort on our walk, we should stop and drink. Our work can wait, and will be better performed by our hard-earned rest. If we pass on in our zeal we will be thirsty when there is no well. Work and comfort must remain in balance. In excess, either can make us forget the reasons we sought comfort to begin with. True comfort is the knowledge of work well done, free from distractions of the mind and body. If we become drunk with comfort it kills our will to work.

What is our true work? It is the love of community, tempered and strengthened by comfort, and not slave to the lust for pleasure.

Only rest in God, and in the love we have for each other, can satisfy. Love must be given if it is to be had. That is why a selfish comfort can never content. What is that but laziness? The one who is drunk on his comfort is no better equipped for his work than the one drunk on wine. Neither has any chance of productivity, and certainly neither has a chance to fulfill the passion inside their hearts. Only the comfort that comes from work (the love of humanity) will bring satisfying rest.

Do not begrudge the dusty walk your soul must take from one well to another. For the dust of your journey makes sweeter the water of rest. No water tastes better than when thirst is strongest. If you distract yourself with pleasure before it is earned, you sour the water when you reach the well. Your thirst may temporarily be quenched, but the respite gives little satisfaction. Rather, if you work hard, taking joy in your march and eliminating distractions from your way, the water will be pure and contenting upon your lips.

Work also comes in the form of virtue, which is the greatest form taken by the love of one person for the community of the world. Virtue is achieved when the good of the whole is put above the will of the one. If we distract ourselves with too many selfish pursuits we forget how to act with virtue. Or perhaps we choose to ignore virtue, for it is seldom easy and always seems called upon at the worst possible times. Virtue calls us to abandon our own comfort for another’s need. Funny that the moments when virtue is needed are most often just when we thought we had earned our rest. We come to the well after a hard day’s walk, our lips parched and burned, our pilgrim feet aching and callused. Yet we arrive with another, weaker than ourselves. There is only enough water to dip the ladle once. What will we do? Certainly we have earned our drink, our comfort, but if we take not the course of virtue, and sacrifice our comfort for the other, our whole journey is in vain!

There is a sacrifice which comes from the knowledge that we were made in the image of God; it is that virtue must take precedence over rest, charity over comfort. For those who require our virtue and charity just as surely reflect the image of God as do we. Only love can bestow the rest we seek. If we forego love in our quest for comfort, we will move further away from rest eternal.

But if we forgo our own rest when we have earned it, or if we forgo the charity of others, then our work is also rendered meaningless. These are the honest rewards of our work. Refusal to accept them is ungratefulness.

Why do we work so tirelessly for rewards we refuse to collect? Why do we hoard money we refuse to spend, surrounding ourselves with possessions that are lost in the blink of an eye? What is the tragedy of the man who works without rest all his years, hoping only for a comfortable retirement, yet dies before his satisfaction is spent? Is his tragedy in his loss, or in his best years wasted? And what of the man who toils all his hours for the house which is given up to the storm, or for the possessions which are sacrificed to the thief? Surely the one who works only for him/herself must live with the fear of loss. But the one who works for others—for love—is already giving their gift, and thus receives a reward such that neither storm, nor thief, nor death can take.

Work for love and rest in God.

Work not to separate yourself from your fellows through wealth and status, but to stand in unity with them. If you only work to hoard your own wealth, your only reward will be stress. Such accumulation only leads to increased desire. Rather, work that the goodness of your labor should benefit the world and those you love. What other reward can you honestly envision attaining by your labor, and when will you get there? The higher the ambition the more fickle are the forces that hold you there. The greater the gain of wealth, power or fame, the more perilous, and indeed imminent, is the fall. But if you turn your ambition toward love, you have already arrived at the goal. The contentment which can be gained by breaking loose from false hopes gives the rest which wealth and possessions never could.

When a rich young man asked Jesus how he could gain eternal life, Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. But rather than obeying, the young man went away grieving. Why did this young man hold so tightly to the possessions which gave him grief? Jesus told him how to be free from his grief, but he valued the comfort of his possessions more than the rest available in the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus said “it will be hard for a rich person to enter.” (Matthew 19:22-23)

The person who’s contentment, yea, his whole identity is in his money, his labor, his possessions, has no time or energy for the kingdom of which Jesus speaks–the kingdom of love. The tragedy for such a man is that his selfish labor contents him not; neither in eternity, or even now. His wealth gives no rest, only fear that the wealth could be lost. The young man in the gospel went away grieving. Where is his joy in wealth? Selfishness is a parasite which must be fed, cannot be satisfied and slowly drains life away. Work done for oneself alone gives no joy as it drains away hours, years and lives. It takes such hold that we cleave to our possessions in grief, even faced with the eternal promise of love. Is it easier for the poor to enter the kingdom of God than the rich? Indeed! For the poor are less prey to the distraction of greed. Likewise the learned are often too proud to grasp the truth which the unlearned reach for without pause. The wise are ashamed to follow the path carved by the ignorant; the rich reluctant to follow the way of the poor.

But the promise of our work, if done in humility, is a promise of rest eternal. St. Augustine compared our work to the work God undertook on the first six days, the conclusion of each being described with evening and morning, followed by another day. But on the seventh day, when God rested, there is no mention of evening. (Genesis 2:2). The rest of the seventh day is a pure and heavenly rest, a comfort that comes from work which was good.

“Oh Lord God, give peace unto us: the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening. That that rest which thou undertookest after thy works, we also after our works shall rest in Thee, in the Sabbath of eternal life.” (Conf. XIII,50,51)

This is the promise of our labors, each day of which passes into evening. Augustine was right, as he found through a long hard road, littered with useless pleasures and distractions. Let us all pray this prayer. We find no rest until we rest in God. Only once we submit to the God of love like a child to its mother can we find rest.

How peaceful is the baby’s comfort as it suckles at its mother’s breast. The child knows no ambition, no stress of unfulfillment, no consuming desire for beauty, for it already cleaves to perfect beauty. The baby’s greed, its selfishness which causes it to cry when the milk is taken away can be forgiven, and not only because of its ignorance. Would we not cry if perfect rest and perfect love were known to us and then removed? We could be forgiven just as easily if our greed were for our Creator’s love and eternal rest. The child’s ignorance is its blessing, and it knows nothing else. The mother’s generous gift grants this bliss. We are all created out of love, just as the child was born from its mother’s love. The baby knows no pleasure but this, and contents itself in the simplicity. Would we could have rest so pure!

All our lives we seek pleasure and beauty in experience, just as the child leaves its mother’s breast to seek fulfillment in the outer world, but will never find contentment so pure, or love so comforting. Yet our Creating Mother offers this same comfort all our lives. The answer to our unrest, and all our tireless quests for pleasure and beauty waits at the nourishing breast of God.

Oh Love, let me rest in Thee!