hodlbod on Nostr: I have a really hard time resting. It's been 6 days since I worked (due to a flu last ...

I have a really hard time resting. It's been 6 days since I worked (due to a flu last week plus Christmas) and I'm itching to get back to it, but I'm going to force myself to wait at least until Monday.

And I think it's important to - not only is the sabbath "made for man" for his benefit, rest is also an admission that accomplishing what you set out to do "is not of him who runs but of God who gives mercy." I am desperate to make the most of my time by working on Coracle. But "unless the Lord builds the house, he labors in vain that builds it."

This is why Moses prays in Psalm 90, "establish the work of our hands for us." He had recognized the ephemerality of human life: "we finish our years like a sigh... their boast is only labor and sorrow." He asks God therefore to "teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

But this wisdom is not despair, or skepticism, or stoicism like that expressed in ecclesiastes, while an unknowable God's voice "makes the deer give birth, and strips the forests bare," but hope, and peace:

"Go, eat your bread with joy,
And drink your wine with a merry heart;
For God has already accepted your works.
Let your garments always be white,
And let your head lack no oil.
Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity; for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun."
God has already accepted my works, which in the end is really the only thing that matters, and he has commanded me to rest. And this is only possible - either the work or the rest - in Christ, God become man to do the work we could not, and to give us the rest we could not enter into.
And so every work left for the Christian is a work of joy, and industry is rewarded because it increases the number of accepted works. Rest is permitted because all that can be done has been. Thank God for his mercy on us, that he "knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust" and yet "as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him."
Anyhow, Merry Christmas, see you next week 😅