Verse of the Day for March 14

We finish the fortnight where the argument has been going. Hebrews takes the sabbath, which was a day, and says it was always pointing at something larger.

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Remaineth — it is still outstanding, still owed, not yet fully collected.

And then the next verse defines it in a way that is easy to miss: he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Ceased from his own works. The rest being described is not primarily a nap. It is the end of trying to establish yourself by output — the specific exhaustion of a person who must keep producing in order to be acceptable.

Then verse eleven, which is one of the strangest sentences in the New Testament: let us labour therefore to enter into that rest. Work hard at stopping. He knows how difficult this is.

You may have to work at receiving this, which sounds absurd until you have tried to stop justifying your existence for a single afternoon.

It remains. It has not expired because you have not taken it yet.