The Quiet Work of Rest

How a Nap Became an Act of Faith

I’ve been resting a lot. Maybe it’s aging, although I can easily attribute it to an unusually stressful semester. I often come home in the afternoon and take a nap before dinner. Sometimes I run home in the middle of the day to collapse briefly, a coat shrugged off at the door.

I do enjoy the topics I’m teaching, and I’m reading new things. Or old things—like the Odyssey and Paradise Lost, for a literature class I had not taught before. I’m learning new things, too. I’ve earned several certificates in AI and developed new AI-assisted workflows, trying to make sense of this strange new landscape.

But then there are many doctors and therapists, the club boards and the waiting rooms, the slow work of healing. My age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Katie’s ongoing recovery from a TBI. Plus a steady stream of needs in our young church, a lot of tending to do, of bodies and souls, of the fragile spaces in between.

So, I’m taking a lot of naps and feeling guilty about it. There are always papers to grade, meetings to attend, people to call, and Advent sermons to prepare. I’ll come home and lie down for 20 or 30 minutes, but when I wake up, those responsibilities are all still there.

I’ve managed this pace for decades, juggling various responsibilities and even misplaced priorities. My Dad taught me how to disconnect from expectations when I rest, but he never explained what to do with the guilt when I wake up.

So I’ve been wondering, is a nap an escape or an act of faith? If it is an act of faith, then where are the rhythms, the rituals, the renewal? If they are here, I don’t yet recognize them.

In one of my classes, we noted Augustine’s simple confession: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” I wonder if my afternoon naps are less about exhaustion and more about returning—my body insisting on a kind of homecoming I often resist.

Sabbath is woven into the design of things: our days shaped by light and darkness, our weeks and years punctuated by holy days. Maybe a nap can be a small Sabbath—an act of trust that the world can turn without me, that strength is received rather than manufactured, that God still reigns— a twenty-minute liturgy of letting go.

It’s freeing to see rest in this way, especially in a culture like ours that often measures our worth by what we get done. Rest restores us, refreshes us, and even rescues us, especially when we collapse into the gracious sovereignty of a merciful God. Isaiah says, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.”

I need that strength. Final student projects are coming due. The ornamental grasses need trimming before winter, making room for what will grow next.

Kind of like a nap.

See also:

A liturgy for falling down the stairs