Sep 20th: Rest for the Soul, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.

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Rest for the Soul, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Unhurried. A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 11:28-30.
Do you feel like the day never has enough minutes for you? This Sunday Rev. Dr. Steven Koski will share simple ways to pause, breathe, and find real rest even when life feels crowded. You’ll hear stories and practical rhythms that invite calm without adding another task. Join us in person at First Presbyterian Church of Bend or online and discover how a few quiet moments can bring deeper presence and peace.
Transcript:
Speaker 0 00:00:01 I saw a silence that said, if you can’t get everything done in 24 hours, work nights, , do you ever feel like you need more hours in the day? Now, if you’re a parent, I, I know the answer. You don’t need me to tell you. Life is full. You’re living it. Lunches, carpools, sporting events, homework, bedtime, somewhere in there, hopefully a few minutes to breathe. It’s not just the parents. I hear this constantly from folks who are retired, people who tell me that they’re somehow busier now than when they were working full-time. I mean, grandkids appointments, volunteering, pickleball, a calendar that mysteriously fills up, leaving little room for margin. And it’s not just the adults. I mean, look at our kids shuttled from school to practice, to lessons, to homework, barely a gap in between. I mean, growing up, believing busyness and, and hurry are the norm.
Speaker 0 00:01:06 And I know for some of you there, there’s no leisure in the busyness. I mean, you’re dealing with so much simply trying to survive. Hurry, a sense of hurry doesn’t care what season of life you’re in, . It’ll take whatever space you give it, or for some of you, it, it takes space you never had to give. And even when we, we do get that rare, that rare spo spare moment, a red light, a quiet kitchen, a a few minutes before the house wakes up, how many of us actually rest in those minutes? Now, our bodies may be still for a moment, but our minds are racing. Our minds are anxious. Our minds are our miles ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 0 00:02:02 Hurry isn’t only about a, a full calendar, it’s a pace our minds and spirits have been conditioned to keep. So let me say this clearly, this isn’t a sermon meant to make you feel worse about how full your life is. You don’t need one more thing to feel behind on or one more thing to feel bad about. What I’m actually hoping to offer is something closer to relief. Here’s what I’ve noticed in my own life. Maybe you can relate. When the days are, are moving so fast, I stop being present. You know, being present to the people I love the most, being present to the, the ordinary beauty around me. Being present to a God whose love is always present, even when I’m too busy to notice hurry doesn’t just cost us time. It costs us presence. And presence is where love actually happens. Dallas Willard once said, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. You know, I used to hear that and, and just feel exhausted imagining the effort that that would take.
Speaker 0 00:03:49 But I’ve come to realize he, he wasn’t handing us a new task. He was actually pointing us toward, toward relief, toward a, toward a life where we’re not fighting against a pace that we were never built to sustain. So here’s the good news. You are not a machine, A machine that needs to somehow be more efficient. You are a soul that needs to be loved. Jesus said, come to me. Come to me, all of you who are weary, carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Notice what he didn’t say. Jesus didn’t say, come to me and I’ll give you one more task to do. He didn’t say, come to me and I’ll, I’ll show you one more way that you need to prove yourself.
Speaker 0 00:04:59 His first word to the exhausted was never do more, be more. His first word was, rest. Deep rest for your soul. Just let that land for a moment. Take a breath. Just imagine even for the length of this breath, that God’s deepest desire for you right now, is it your productivity, your performance, your progress, God’s deepest desire is that you might know rest. Now, I wanna be careful here. I I don’t want anyone to hear that. This as a critique of, of your full life. You, you know, raising children, showing up for your job, trying to make a difference in this world, caring for the people who depend on you. I mean, doing the best you can to manage your life. None of that is the problem.
Speaker 0 00:06:13 The problem is only when we try to carry all of that alone, disconnected from the God who never asked us to carry it alone. Notice that Jesus, Jesus surrounded by constant demands, constant pressure, constant need, constant. You know, people constantly demanding something from him. But Jesus never seemed to be in a hurry. You know, he didn’t hustle his way through ministry. Scripture tells us Jesus frequently withdrew to a quiet place to pray, not as an emergency measure, but as a rhythm, a rhythm to his day. The fuller and more demanding that his days became, the more deliberately he stepped away to rest in God’s presence.
Speaker 0 00:07:24 Now, that same rhythm is available to us in, in whatever small form that our lives can hold right now. You know, I imagine some of you might be, might be thinking, you know, it’s an odd time to be talking about rest. I mean, the world is on fire right now, figuratively and literally, there’s real suffering, real injustice. There’s so much that’s broken, slowing down can feel almost irresponsible. Like, like looking away from what deserves our attention. You know, I, I feel that tension too. But notice what happened when Jesus withdrew. He didn’t come back from those quiet places, less aware of the suffering around him.
Speaker 0 00:08:30 He came back more able to see it, more able to stop for the one person everyone else had stopped noticing more able to be moved with compassion instead of numbed by exhaustion. His rest wasn’t, as, wasn’t an escape from a hurting world, world. It’s actually what, what made him present enough to enter the world again and again and again without burning out or shutting down. You know, we’re often told people like me, , suggest, well, you need to practice spiritual disciplines. And that phrase, you know, practice spiritual disciplines can sound like just one more task, just one more task for an already full plate. One more unrealistic demand that adds to the hurry. Instead of offering relief, someone once reframed this for me in a way that I found really, really helpful.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 These aren’t disciplines in the sense of, of striving more they’re means of, of grace, practices or rhythms that o don’t add weight to your life, but open a door to a grace that’s already there. Think of it less like exercise and more like breathing. You don’t work to earn your next breath. You just receive it again and again and again. Rest works the same way. It’s not something you achieve or earn. It’s not some reward at the end of working really hard. It’s something you receive. You know, there’s a, there’s an interpretation of translation of the Bible called the message and the message paraphrases Jesus’ invitation. You know, the invitation in, in Matthew 11, come to me, all of you who are, who are hurried and harried. It interprets that, that phrase as learning the unreinforced unforced rhythms of grace. I love that. The unforced rhythms of grace. I love that because it isn’t asking you to overhaul your life or master some new spiritual discipline. It’s an invitation to a rhythm. I mean, not muscled into place by sheer willpower, not, not forced, but received the way you’d receive a gift someone keeps offering,
Speaker 1 00:11:53 Whether or not you’ve earned it. So you don’t need a perfect system. You need one small door, one new rhythm. I mean, maybe it’s five quiet minutes with a cup of coffee before the house wakes up. Allowing yourself to take a deep breath before the day takes your breath away. Maybe it’s turning your phone off during dinner. Maybe it’s a slow Saturday morning walk instead of a full errand list. Maybe it’s a new rhythm at the end of the day, phones away sitting on the edge of the bed asking the people you love how their day really was. Instead of rushing everyone towards lights out, or maybe it’s simpler than any of that. A few soft questions you carry through the day. Not to answer perfectly, it’s not a test, but just to notice where did I see beauty today? What brought me joy? Where did I get to give someone the gift of my attention? Now again, you’re not grading yourself on the answers.
Speaker 1 00:13:25 You’re off opening your eyes, opening your eyes just a little wider to a day already full of grace, whether you noticed it or not. Now, the fall season, here it is, the fall season. And the fall season has a way of arriving, like a starting gun. The calendar fills back in almost overnight school, sports meetings. The holidays are already visible on the horizon, and most of us respond by running faster, faster and faster to keep up. We rarely choose our pace this time of year we just inherited. But what if, what if this fall, instead of letting the season set your rhythm, you set it first, not by doing less necessarily. I mean for the, for many of you that this season is gonna be full no matter what we decide together today. But what if? What if you just decided before the rush fully arrives, you decided what kind of presence you want to bring
Speaker 2 00:14:52 To this season? A rhythm of peace or reactivity, a rhythm that leaves room for you to be present, grounded, unhurried, awake to the people in front of you rather than present and body while your mind is already racing. Three tasks ahead. Now, that’s not a resolution, simply an invitation. No judgment, no demands, no obligations, an invitation. One open door, one new rhythm, established now before the season demands everything you have because Jesus who said, come to me. If you’re hurried and harried, come to me. I will give you rest. Jesus isn’t waiting for a slower season to meet you. He’s offering you peace for this season. The one that’s about to begin. May it be so.