God's Plan

There’s a phenomenon most people experience in their lifetime that goes completely undiscussed: your first summer working a full-time job.

No one prepares you for what a transition that jarring is like. For most of your life, summer is a season of undeniable wonder - of poolsides, snowballs, and staying up way past your bedtime watching your favorite movies. But most importantly, it’s a break from the responsibilities of school.

Then, everything changes in one summer. Suddenly, pool days turn into eight-hour shifts, late summer nights turn into early mornings, and the hope of a real break feels dimmer.

Let’s be clear - there’s nothing wrong with work. In fact, the Lord’s original design for man in the Garden of Eden involved work, as He “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and the human community, work remains part of God’s plan for man even today and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). When ordered toward the good of the individual: “In work, the person exercises and fulfills in part the potential inscribed in his nature” (CCC 2428). 

For many of us, this sounds like wishful thinking. Whether we like our jobs or struggle with them, work can be difficult, consuming, and exhausting, especially when it’s preceded and followed by the countless other responsibilities of life. We know this reality of labor is a product of the consequences of man’s fall (Genesis 3:17), but why does it feel so contradictory to what Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promises us - that, through Him, we are to “have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10)? Why does abundance sometimes feel so unattainable when day-to-day life often leaves us with what feels like so little time to breathe?

An abundant life - a life of joy and peace - is not something we can obtain on our own, but finds us when we abide in God: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). 

The Lord deeply desires to restore this communion with Him - to restore Eden - in our hearts on this earth so that we can live in the fullness of communion with Him for all eternity, and he gives us vessels through which His restorative power can flow, namely prayer and frequent reception of the sacraments. Yet, we consistently find ourselves in an all-too-familiar cycle: we struggle to find time to abide in the Lord in prayer and the sacraments, so we feel distant from Him, and the demands of work and day-to-day life subsequently rattle us.

The remedy to this human problem resides in something else man’s original existence in the Garden of Eden teaches us - another key piece of our humanity the Lord seemed to use our childhood summer breaks to reveal to us.

God’s design for us included work, but it also included rest.

We know the Creation story all too well - that God “rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done” (Genesis 2:2) - but it’s easy for us to brush this off as something that merely sounds nice or something we’ll get around to one day when we have time. It’s equally as easy for us to view rest as something we have to earn by merit of our labor.

But rest isn’t any of these things. It’s not just some concept that sounds nice. It’s an essential aspect of the human life through which we live as beings created in the image and likeness of God.

To rest is both to act as God Himself did and to intentionally set aside time to build deeper intimacy with the Lord through prayer and participation in the sacramental life. As St. John Paul II states in his encyclical on work, LABOREM EXERCENS, “man ought to imitate God, his Creator, in working, because man alone has the unique characteristic of likeness to God. Man ought to imitate God both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest.” 

Rest is essential enough to fostering our relationship with God that an entire day of the week is set aside for “reflection, silence, cultivation of the mind, and meditation which furthers the growth of the Christian interior life” (CCC 2186). 

In perfectly living out the will of His Father, Jesus serves as a model for us of the necessity of rest. Throughout His public ministry, He makes frequent time to be alone to be with His Father in prayer (Mark 1:35, 6:46), even exhorting His Apostles to rest, particularly when He sees they are lacking in it: “And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31).

And so, when we make time for rest, we live in the image and likeness of God and in imitation of Jesus. There, we find a pathway toward deeper intimacy with God. More rest opens the door for more time spent receiving the sacraments, in prayer, in Adoration, and celebrating the Lord‘s Day the way it was always intended to be celebrated. In deepening these practices, we deepen our relationship with the Lord, and a greater abundance of joy and peace pours from His heart into ours - a joy and peace that cannot be shaken, even by work that feels overwhelming and consuming.

While summers may not be marked by pool days and sleeping in late, like they were as a child, reflecting on the happiness and simplicity of our restful childhood summers points us to an even greater reality - that rest is not only important but essential to our humanity and to entering into deeper communion with the Lord so we can experience a taste of His original design for us in the Garden as we await perfect communion with him in heaven.

So, use this summer as a time to intentionally practice resting well and resting in the Lord’s presence so that rest can become an essential part of your life.

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Keely Diebold is a mass communication professional and educator. She is a native of Houma and a lifelong parishoner of St. Gregory.