ON tombstones in olden times, mostly at the foot, the familiar Q.I.P. used to be chiseled. They were the first letters of the three Latin words: Quiescat In Pace, which mean: That he (or she) may rest in peace.
What idea do you attach to that rest? What sense has it for you, that after your dying the rest awaits you? What do you understand by it, that he who from your home or circle dies away in Jesus, has entered into the eternal rest?
With the early fading of a newly given darling, which had known little else of the world than the cradle and mother’s lap, you have no impression of this. Even with the dying of an older child, which already made acquaintance with the playworld and the schoolworld, that idea of rest has nothing in it that appeals to you. For a child his rest is his sleep, and provided he is well and strong, he never rests otherwise, but is always active, always busy, bubbling over with exuberant life.
Also of a “Sunday child,” as he used to be called, who was always prosperous, who never knew cares nor sorrows, whose calm and carefree life ran along like an even stream, and who after a rich and happy life, in good old age, quietly fell asleep in his Savior, you have no idea of his rest that grips you.
If, on the other hand, a wrestler dies away from your midst, who all his life long had been harrowed by disasters and cares, and who under the load of his griefs and difficulties every time seemed to succumb, yes, then at his grave it is to you a blessed thought, a glorious thought, that at last his trials and sufferings are ended, and that with the grave for him there began the eternal rest.
And yet, also at such a grave the rest, which remaineth for the people of God, in its real significance and depth is not grasped.
For yes, that rest also implies, that the chase of life now ceases, and the burden of life falls from the shoulders, and sorrow and trouble are forever ended, when God Himself shall wipe away the last tear from your eyes; but yet this is not all.
With God the weariness of heart also counts. Jesus portrays it so touchingly: “Now Lazarus is comforted, and thou art tormented” (Luke 16, 25). But yet, there is implied in that rest for the people of God infinitely more.
ALREADY he who knows the fight with sin, appreciates this.
That fight also is not equally bitter for all. With this fight also there is a deadly terrible center, and around it the wide circumference. Finally even an outermost circumference. And according as God has appointed you your place either in the heat of that battle, or farther away from it, or in that outermost region, you have known the life and death struggle with Satan, sin and the world, the restlessness in the broad ranks of battle, or only little more than the noise in the distance.
But violent, ordinary or faint, the fight with sin has some time wearied every soul. The driver, who never let go. The afterthroes of earlier slavery, which ever remained sensitive. The disappointments following your ever trying anew, to rid yourself of your bosom sin. Always that unrest of conscience. That dissatisfaction with and regarding yourself every evening, when you were on your knees before God, anew.
Your Catechism applies to this weariness of soul the Sabbath commandment. Your spiritual Sabbath: a “ceasing from your evil works,” and thus, already here below a beginning of the eternal Sabbath, i.e., of the eternal rest.
The blood of the Cross brings him, who believes, in and after conversion, peace. “We then, who are justified by faith, have peace with God” (Rom. 5, 1). But not yet the rest. The battle, the trials go on even after conversion. “Not as though I have already apprehended, but that I might apprehend it” (Phil. 3, 12).
He that overcometh, overcometh in the battle after his conversion, he shall inherit all things.
He that shall have overcome unto the end, for him is the eternal rest.
Then never more the driver, never more the temptation.
Sin which here always pursues us, and entices us in its snares, up yonder forever disarmed.
There helpless, as here, alas, we stood so often helpless over against it.
AND yet, even this gives you no clear view of the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
In God’s holy Word that eternal rest is drawn in a sharply outlined image.
It is always Israel in the wilderness, that shall find rest in the land of milk and honey. Israel that on account of his murmuring and apostasy is detained in the wilderness, and does not enter into the rest. Israel that after forty years penalty, in his generation renewed, by Joshua is led into the rest. And of this Israel it is said, that he enjoyed rest merely in the shadows of the symbol, for that the true Joshua is our Jesus, Who brings all people who believe and die in His fellowship, through the valley of the shadow of death into the eternal rest.
What does this refer to?
Surely not to the cares and difficulties of life, for Israel in the wilderness ate the “bread of the mighty,” and drank from the rock, his clothing did not wear out, and his footgear did not perish. If ever a people lived carefree it was Israel in the wilderness.
Neither can you say, that in the wilderness temptation was strongest, for in the wilderness Israel wandered about outside of the world at large, tormented by no other temptation, than that which rose from his own heart.
So the rest for the people of God which is pictured to us in the expectation of Israel while wandering in the wilderness, has an altogether different significance.
It is the rest of the pilgrim, who finally has reached the goal of his long pilgrim journey; at last he is there; and now forever throws away staff and scrip.
He is in the Father-house.
The ideal has become real.
He has what consciously or unconsciously in the deepest prayer in his heart, he has so ardently desired.
DO you understand this transition? Between being on the wing and at home, between desire and possession, the always becoming, and eternal being.
God is never become, never becomes and never shall become. He is Jehovah. I shall be what I shall be. He is that Which He is.
But ours is the development, the unfolding, the becoming. Our existence, our life on earth is one process. Suckling, child, boy, youth, man, old man. It is all one ladder, with rounds without end, which we have to climb. Never at rest, always forward and farther. One journeying on, and on; what is arrived at, to leave behind, always again to go farther. Scarcely has the top been reached of the mountain ahead of us, but another yet higher mountain shows itself, and that too must again be climbed. Hence that training, ever learning, always being driven toward further knowledge, further light, higher power, richer comprehension.
Here rest is sin. Is squandering away one’s life. Is standing still, while the way beckons farther and higher.
So it was in Paradise. Adam pure and holy, right before God and wise. But not to remain so. No, but to develop himself, spiritually to grow, to advance, and then, yea, then he, too, at last, when the course was run, would enter into the eternal rest.
Here restlessly wandering about in the wilderness. The lad wants to become youth, and, having become youth, to become man is all his desire. And having become man, yea, what then? Desire to become an old man? No, not that. To become old is to go down, and the way beckons to higher.
Pilgrims to the eternal Fatherland, only up yonder is your Canaan. In the Father-house awaits you the eternal rest. When finally the enduring condition shall have been obtained. When the becoming shall have ended, and eternal being shall enter in. When you will be, what forever more you must remain to be.
There there is no more homesickness after higher, but at the highest top your tabernacle prepared for you by God, your incorruptible habitation, and therein your being having become unchangeable.
No climbing, but also no going down.
The pilgrim staff thrown aside, and you with your whole soul eternally rejoicing in the rest which God has prepared for His people.
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