As I walked through a garden centre, I mused at all the different fruit and veg plants 🪴 I would love to buy but can’t.

Simply because I nether have the garden needed to grow them at present nor the finance to purchase lots of apple 🍎 trees at £50 a piece 🙃

And as we strolled along the rows of beautiful greens and flowers 🌷 I said to myself that I didn’t want them. They were not purposeful or useful to me.

Just as my life is filled with all timings and patterns that have a good conclusion. My hours are filled with productive habits and tasks that have reason. It is maxed to capacity. And I strife with every busy hour, from work in the morning to have money, to home filled with endless cleaning to maintain that clean home, to the endless taking care of children and all that it entails. Every task has a reason and correlates to a line of what I deem to be a succession of purpose.

And God said.

Pleasure has a purpose.

And I think to the garden of my life, where often I am so keen to dig up every weed and green that has no purpose, no real role, no real reason.

I think how every moment has to be filled with only productive entries, filled with something that brings a result in some form. I think of how society encourages us as well to fill every corner of our clocks 🕰️ to push forward our ambitions and dreams and to keep pushing. A push that tries so hard to break that very clock. ⏰

A life of pushing purpose that tries to push more hours out of the day. A day filled with all purpose and no pleasure.

But God reminds me, that no.

This is not how to do it. This is not how to live, not fully.

God told Adam to work the garden 6 days and rest on the seventh.

Rest, not to do nothing. But to sit back and see, sit back and relax, sit back and enjoy. Sit back and just admire.

Sit back and just be.

I believe the rest isn’t just about rest. I believe the Sabbath rest isn’t just a consequence of work. I don’t believe that the God who never sleeps was feeling tired after creating the world 🌎 and I don’t believe Adam was told to rest because he would work hard. We know that Adam was only told that he would work by the sweat of his brow after the fall.

So what would Adam’s sabbath looked like in the garden of Eden? Would he have found himself just sitting somewhere comfortable, would Eve and sat beside him and the two of them just sat back, relaxed and admired the creation of the hands of God. Would he have sat with them, maybe by a tranquil river. Maybe they would have sat there all day, listening to the story of Gods creation of their world and other galaxies. 🌌

I believe the rest had a purpose that was different to the rest we physically and mentally require in this sin filled world.

I believe the rest had its own purpose.

Pleasure.

The time 🕰️ set aside to solely enjoy. The time to sit back and look at his creation in your life, to give glory and admire his craftsmanship.

Like an artist 👨‍🎨 who paints 🎨 the most incredible of paintings and on completion, he stands back.

He stops.

He stands still.

His eyes solely take pleasure in the work of his hands. 🙌

Friend, don’t sway ether way too much.

Find the balance, keep the balance.

The balance of that purposeful and intentional work, that time set aside for training, the hours set for hardship and grafting. The time and energy you spend on what will give you a harvest, a result.

Because all of your time was never meant to be in the tending, all your time was never made for working.

You who were made with a purpose, yet God also, takes pleasure and delight in you. And he wants you to take pleasure and delight in him.

Zephaniah 3:17

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Psalm 37:4

⁴ Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you your heart’s desires.

^{Psalm 127:1&2}

¹ Unless the Lord builds a house,
    the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city,
    guarding it with sentries will do no good.
² It is useless for you to work so hard
    from early morning until late at night,
anxiously working for food to eat;
    for God gives rest to his loved ones.