Faith & Insight: Finding peace in Sabbath rest

Summer vacation is over on Monday and our kids return to school. It’s been a great summer as always — fun trips, games and family.

I’m on vacation this week and spending some time on the coast listening to the waves crash and the children scream in joy as they’re being chased by the tide.

It’s good to get away and rest. God encourages us to rest weekly. “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

I’m not good at rest, I work and work until I get worn out and I’m not as productive as I should be. When I do rest, though, I find that rest in Jesus, God’s true Sabbath rest.

Being on the beach helps me experience God’s Sabbath. I see his might and power in the waves. I hear his joy in the voice of the children playing. I see his creative genius in the beauty of the ocean and the surrounding landscape. We serve an awesome God!

I hope you have experienced God’s rest this summer.

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:9–10)

Capt. Mark Cyr is pastor of The Salvation Army, 661 Colorado St. For information, go to salvationarmy.carsoncity.org