Rest and liberation

During our three-day weekend trip to Russell, Northland, I indulged in reading a book that had been high on my list after watching and listening to interviews with the author, Cole Arthur Riley. She is a thoughtful and gifted young woman with insight and wisdom. I found that there was no way to read this book without a pen or highlighter close by. It was packed with quotes that enlightened and echoed conclusions I had also come to as a Black Christian on this earth.

Today, I would like to share excerpts from her chapter titled Rest

To rest is a special kind of power

Psalm 23:2, we have "He makes me lie down". What a peculiar answer to the valley of the shadow of death. You might expect God's response to be to have people rise, to empower them to fight. But God's answer is unapologetic care for the body. The deepest yet most neglected of needs. .....

The most enduring yet undermined sentiment of evangelism: "Come to me all you that are weary...and I will give you rest" Mathew 11:28 ...

Yet, when we invite people into spirituality, too often rest is reduced to an inner posture someone should adopt while exhausting their body. But the Bible says, "In returning and rest, you shall be saved (Isaiah 30:15)

Rest is not the reward of our liberation, nor something we lay hold of once we are free. It is the path that delivers us there.

We are expected to feel deeply lucky and even indebted to a society that allows us to work, even if that work cannot satisfy our most basic needs.

Sometimes the appropriate response to desperation is to do the unthinkable. Close your eyes.

Activist and Theologian Tricia Hersey says "to not rest is really being violent toward your body, to align yourself with a system that says your body doesn't belong to you, keep working, you are simply a tool for our production"

Rest is an act of defiance, and it cannot be predicated on apology. It is the audacity to face the demands of the world and proclaim, We will not be owned.

You were never meant to prove your dignity.

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In a capitalist society, Rest is radical

In a White supremacist system, Black bodies at rest is Resistance. It is liberation.

I believe that God cares as much about our bodies as He does for our souls.

So should we.