You can stop and rest now.”Īnd yet Jesus already has. I want to hear someone say, “Okay, you’re good. I’m always bumping up against my failure to live up to my own expectations. When I live under the impossible weight of trying to justify myself before others, there’s never rest. I need to volunteer for another activity. In order to justify myself, I become enslaved to hamster-wheel living: I need to follow up with that person to ensure they didn’t misunderstand me or to ensure they feel I loved them well. I need to spend more time with my kids so they know how loved they are. I need to serve the people around me better.

Consciously or unconsciously, I have a list of criteria I need to meet in order to feel I’m living up to my standard of being a wonderful mother, wife, friend, neighbor, church member, Christ-follower. I use my own standards to decide if I’m worthy. Yet rather than resting secure in the righteousness of Christ, I often decide I’m the best judge. He alone has made me right in the sight of God. It’s a verdict that comes to us through faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross. To be justified is to be declared righteous by God. As Paul declares, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. He gets straight to the heart, which he’s tenderly pursuing.Īnd as I’m exploring why I can’t rest, I’m finding at the heart of everything-all my racing around, striving, and lack of rest-that I’m trying to justify myself when he has already justified me. Why am I running so hard that I don’t feel I can rest? Even in writing, I’ve seen Jesus cut through my pretenses. It’s much easier and prettier to talk about how rest might look than to delve into my own issues.

When he finished, he gently asked, “But what’s at the heart of your hamster-wheel running?” Just as the piece was nearly wrapped up, I asked my husband to read it. This was going to be an article on how God provides us rest, but how we often don’t see or take it.

Hamster wheel of life