When Our Hearts Are Restless

How many of you remember the first day of school jitters? Choosing carefully what to wear. Wondering who will be in your class. Worrying about who you will sit with at lunch. Hoping no one decides to pick on you. We get nervous even if we have been to school for years and years because that first day of school won’t be like the last day of school the year before. You can’t go back. The good news about first day of school jitters is they don’t last long. The first day comes and goes, and the unknown becomes familiar.

But when we live with worry and fear day after day, week after week, month after month, it wears on our bodies. The body’s response to worry and fear is called anxiety. Every year in the US, 20% of adults and 32% of teenagers experience an anxiety disorder. They feel restless, on edge, tense, they have trouble concentrating, and they are in a constant state of fatigue. We have sustained as a society a disruption. The pandemic was like an earthquake, and we are still experiencing the impact and the aftershocks. And it has left us with day to day unknowns, new normals to get used to, and it has worn on our bodies and our spirits.

The book of Hebrews was written to Christians who were dealing with anxiety. These Christians were raised Jewish and had heard Jesus’ story and begun to follow what they called “The Way”. As the movement became more defined, there was more and more friction with the Jewish establishment. It was becoming clear that the followers of Jesus wouldn’t also be Jewish; the Way was being deemed too different to be a Jewish sect like the Pharisees or the Sadducees. It was a new day, and the writer of Hebrews is appealing to them that they can’t go back. Even though they are anxious. Even though they are being persecuted. God is calling them to something new, even though they don’t know exactly what it will look like yet.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” says Hebrew. Faith is knowing something in your bones that you can’t prove with your senses. You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, touch it, but you KNOW it. That’s the way God’s call works, he says, all the way back to the universe being formed at God’s command. And he harks back to a litany of Biblical figures: Aaron, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Moses, the Israelites, finally, after giving all these example, he says, “What more should I say? I don’t have time to list them all: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel, the prophets, women, persecuted…all these, though they were commended for their faith. They experienced facing a new day and change and upheaval, and they had faith. They trusted God. They trusted that God was in control and God cared about them even in the midst of the chaos.

Rev. Frederick Buechner writes that “Faith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved. Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.”

That’s all Abraham got…a hand just beyond his grasp. He was 75 when God came to him. He and Sarai, his wife, were retired and God said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” They didn’t have any children; they lived with Abraham’s brother’s family. And God said, “Leave it all behind. I’ll show you where to go as you are going.”

And Hebrews recalls that it wasn’t smooth going. There was a famine that forced them to travel to Egypt, where Sarah got taken into Pharoah’s house. A family feud leads them to part ways with their nephew, Lot, who had chosen to move with them, and they loved like their own son. Abraham and Sarah’s maid have a son together, Ishmael, and there are all kinds of conflict between them. Finally, nearly 25 years after they left on this journey, Sarah has a son, then God tests Abraham – will he sacrifice his only son? As they are on the way to the place of sacrifice, Isaac asks, “Abba, where is the lamb to sacrifice?” And Abraham, I imagine not able to look at his son, with tears in his eyes answers, “God will provide.”

That is faith. The Hebrews are facing a new day and change and upheaval. Will they stand up for what they believe? Even if it means parting ways from family? Even if it means sacrifice? They are worried and anxious. They are stepping into the unknown with nothing to guide them but a hand just beyond their grasp.

But how do we do that? How do we step out in faith? Jesus said we need to focus on how we live, not on how we stay alive. “Don’t worry about what you’ll eat or drink or wear. Look at the birds – they have food and they don’t have fields and barns to harvest and store crops. Look at the lilies – they are more beautiful than the finest king’s robes. Stop worrying and focus on God’s kingdom, on God’s righteousness.”

The first step is to stop worrying. St. Augustine wrote around 400 “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Our hearts are restless until we are faithful – until we are able to step confidently into the unknown, because we know that we are loved.

Wendell Berry penned a poem that for me speaks volumes about how we find rest in God. It comes as we place ourselves within creation, within all that God has made. I invite you to hear and place yourself in the poem,

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

For me, remembering our place in creation allows me to rest secure in God’s love. Seeing pictures from the James Webb telescope has been awe-inspiring to me, images from 13 billion light years away, and there’s more beyond that we haven’t seen. We live one galaxy in over 100 billion that we have counted so far, we revolve around one sun out of some 200 billion trillion stars, on the third rock out, where there are all the elements in the right balance to support life. And not only do we happen to live here, God knows our names. God knows how many hairs we have. God knows our troubles and our wanderings, stores all our tears in a bottle, has counted each one of them, and they are recorded.

We are loved. So we take the next step of faith confidently into the unknown.