One summer day, I was with my three brothers in a park, swinging the bat, throwing and catching the ball, when some other youngsters approached. They were insistent about joining in, and on their terms. We conversed for a moment, and things grew more intense. They were a little bigger and larger in number, so we surmised that under the circumstances, we had one best option: Run.
At home, just a few blocks away, was our father. He saw us and our alarm, and asked, “What’s the matter?” We told him, and his response was as certain as it was calm: “Get in the car.”
It wasn’t long before we yelled, “There they are!” Our father, Frederick Jesse Jones—Frederick, by the way, means “peaceful ruler”—drove up next to our foes and and, from the window, asked if he could have a word with them.
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“See, these boys,” he said, “they are my boys. I’ve taught them not to go looking for trouble. If you wanted to play with them, there was a way you could have done so, but trying to make them play with you was not the way to do it. Here’s the thing. If you mess with them, you mess with me. Do we understand each other?”
They were respectful. “Yes, sir.” Problem solved. Presence matters.
In our reading from Exodus, Moses is in a bit of a situation. In the previous chapter, Israel worshiped a golden calf that Moses then ground to powder. Punishment for idolatry is swift and severe. Then in 33:1–3 came the punishment that landed the hardest: God told Moses to go up to the promised land and said he would send an angel ahead but would not go with them himself.
Now we find Moses pleading for God’s accompaniment. The gist of it is this: You have to go with us. We’re not going without you.
The biblical witness includes the threat—and the reality—of God’s absence. I am grateful for this.
Nothing feels more threatening than the absence of God. There is no sufficient response. And being honest about God’s non-presence is holy, if hollow, ground. I recently wrote about a moment when I felt God’s presence through “a thousand glistening leaves” in a forest across the street from our home. I talked about my soul calling me to bask in the moment. A dear friend appreciated my words and added what might be considered an asterisk to her amen: “Once outside of nature’s canopy, [basking in the moment] is not easy to do. . . . And the world has not been kind, so it feels a bit unsafe to allow her to love me again even in small ways. At least not yet.”
Finally, God relents. Alright, I’ll go with you and give you rest. Notice that God’s presence here is specific, offering the calming balm of reassurance that Moses is longing for.
Rest is just the thing so many of us long for. But not just any rest. I recently had a dream about my deceased father. He was dressed in an academic robe, the garments of a teaching life he never got to live. This pleased me. What troubled me was his face. Outfitted in the clothes of his desire, he carried an expression I have seen too many times in too many people: accomplishment shadowed by dread.
That face has stayed with me. It is more than my father’s face. It is the face of our time. We are living inside a sustained, low-grade dread. It is something quieter than crisis, more corrosive than fatigue. The accomplishment is real, and so is the shadow across it. For most of us, this overcast sky is something we have come to accept as normal.
What is needed is something older and deeper than technique and a mere productivity reset. Call it “original rest.” It is rest that needs no authorization from a job completed. It is the rest of a being never in search of validation or valuation, things innate to its existence. It is rest filtered and fueled by an abiding peace that never goes away completely.
Original rest is rest as observed by God in the beginning, before, during, and after creation. This original rest is so deep and rich that the whole of existence flows from it, fully and free, up to the very moment you are reading this and beyond.
Helping to make God’s presence so necessary are divine offerings, specific and needful, that keep us journeying on.
Leontyne Price, opera singer supreme, is now 99 years old. Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and 13 Grammy Awards. In an interview with her in Inspired: The Breath of God, she offers this testimony about the power of a necessary presence:
I never go out on the stage without praying. . . . One night I was supposed to perform, and I was very ill. . . . As always, I took time to pray before and somehow, I was able to get to the stage. I leaned on the piano because I was very weak and ill, and I prayed silently after each note, as if saying to God, “It’s really not up to me alone. It’s up to you and me.” I will always remember that night because I probably did the best singing I have ever done. With every note, I felt God’s presence. After the performance, I was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with diverticulitis.
