day no. 17,450: rocking chairs and resting well

“It might be said symbolically that Americans have a taste for rocking-horses, as they certainly have a taste for rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter.” — G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America 

Americans are restless. 

Rocking chairs allow one to rest without resting completely and that is, in microcosm, the essence of the American spirit. We strive, we reach, we push... or at least, we used to. 

We did not find rest in Jesus, however. That is not why we have stopped striving. We have not found contentment. No, we grew discontent with our discontent and so we found a new way to be discontent... laziness.

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." — Augustine

Doing nothing is not resting. A rocking chair can genuinely relaxing. It maximizes the relationship between exertion and relaxation. A minimal twitch of the leg can set the entire body back and forth. In that way, a rocking chair is perhaps a good picture of resting in Christ while doing that which He prepared beforehand for us. 

We must do something and we must rest. In Christ, we can do both. Without Him, we either work ourselves to death or we die to our work. We get anxious or we get lazy, but we do not rest.