A New Year from a Place of Rest

For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Acts 17:28

What if we step into this new year from a true place of rest?

This time of year especially, I love to dwell on a beautiful picture of what God’s heart for us has always been…echoed through time, since Creation. The ancient Hebrew rhythm of day and night is that a new day actually begins as the sun sets. This means that one of the first acts in a new day is to lie down and sleep. What a powerful picture of beginning each new day, from a place of rest…literally. We go to sleep, and God continues His work.

And as we sleep, the God of Creation creates and works and pours out, holding all things together and making things new, fulfilling His Covenant over us.

And without our help, we wake to a world we didn’t make, a salvation we didn’t earn, and a grace that meets us in our surrender. And in our posture of rest, He invites us to simply step in and join Him in the Kingdom work that He is already doing.

In this Genesis rhythm of surrender and rest, we wake to the Father’s heart already extending grace, sustaining and providing, and inviting us to enjoy and share and develop the work He initiated. This posture reminds us that the Covenant of God, in Jesus, covers all the way over us just as we are, not as we should be, even as we rest.

These days, especially, will tempt us to measure our lives by what we do, or produce, or by the behavior of our children or the appearance of our homes. But living from a posture of rest is closer than we think. We just simply keep returning to the good news that it is not in what we do, but in what He has already done, that we find who we really are.

Jesus, Himself is already the answer to all our deepest longings, and His Covenant with us shapes our lives in every way. “For in Him, we live, and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

With this posture, each day is not just a responsibility but rather, a response to His ability to meet us right where we are and to walk freely in our identity as His. It’s less about carrying the weight of doing more and getting better, and more about remembering who He already is and who we already are in Him.

So, yes! Let’s set the intentions to steward well our time and our health, or bring order and purpose to chaos, or lean into wherever God is stirring! But let’s do that from a posture of rest.

Thank you, Jesus, that we wake each day to the abiding peace and freedom of Your Covenant Love, as we join You in the work You are already doing. May the New Year find us, with souls at rest, as we remember again what is already true, in You.

-Kristin Hill