Resting in God

Last Sunday (16th Sunday Yr B) brought us a lovely invitation to “Come away …..and rest for a while.” (Mk 6:30-34)
This week Jesus re-issues the invitation when He says …to all who are “sitting ready” that He would give as much as was wanted. (Jn 6:1f) What is it like to “come way and rest awhile?” and to sit, waiting in emptiness and yet ready…???

You may say ‘rest’!!!! what can the Lord be possibly talking about? All I feel is toil and pain – not rest. When I try to follow His invitation, suffering and struggle beset me on all sides …if this is rest! I think it is an odd kind of rest ….
But hold on, there’s hope in the sitting and waiting….
Doesn’t Psalm 39 say:
“I waited, I waited for the Lord
And He stooped down to me”

Imagine the Lord stooping down to me! Can you really believe this? when you see your desires obscured and your mind blank? Be not afflicted by this but rather consider it a great happiness because that person is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires and without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of failure and neglect and wandering forgetfulness and hear Him say:

Come then my love
My lovely one come
For see winter is past
The rains are over and gone
The season of glad songs has come
Come then my love
Show me your face – your heart
Let me hear your voice – your requests
For your voice is sweet
And your face beautiful…. (Cf Song of Songs)

Ah yes Lord – here I am – coming to You
“Breathe over my garden”

I wonder what G M Hopkins had in mind when he wrote:
… “and the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast
And with ah! Bright wings”

What wonders would He not work in our heart if only in our times of rest we would allow Him to brood over us as He did for Mary:

…. “and the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her…… (Lk 1:35)

“Stand stoutly then in this work, ever more heaving up unto Him thy lovely consent in gladness of love”. Book of Privy Counsel