It was exactly three hundred years ago today.

On the frigid night of December 18th, 1722, the teenager dipped his quill in the ink jar and began to write. He probably cupped his hands toward the warm lantern for a moment first, just to make his fingers more agile in the chilly air. Then he began to compose. Jonathan Edwards was just 74 days past his nineteenth birthday when he wrote the first batch of his famous resolutions.1

His brain was swirling with holy ambition. Edwards had completed his graduate coursework at Yale in May and had desired to enter into the public ministry, just as his father, Timothy Edwards, and grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, had done before him. Just a few months earlier, in August of 1722, the younger Edwards had arrived in New York City, 150 years before any skyscrapers were built, to preach his first series of sermons. By all accounts, those sermons were excellent.2

Edwards had been called to New York to attempt to pastor a Presbyterian congregation that had recently experienced a church split. In the bustling port city, Edwards had found success in preaching his earliest sermonic orations as well as finding true friendship and spiritual companionship in the home of his host family. His heart was alive, and his spirit was on fire for Christ. He was ready to commit his whole life, as well as his eternal soul, to the service of God.

His quill carefully drew out the first few lines of ink on the page:

1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence.3

That night, in a steady hand and in the same color of ink, Edwards wrote out the first 35 of his resolutions. He would add several more that week and then continue the practice of adding new resolutions for the better part of the winter. As the calendar flipped from 1722 to 1723, Edwards had written nearly forty such resolutions:

7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

18. Resolved, to live so at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of things of the gospel, and another world.

42. Resolved, frequently to renew the dedication of myself to God, which was made at my baptism; which I solemnly renewed, when I was received into the communion of the church; and which I have solemnly re-made this 12th day of January, 1722–23.4

Spiritual Ecstasy and Discouragement

Edwards would later look back on this period as the most beautiful experience of his personal sanctification.5 His faith was growing so quickly that he could practically chart the progress. In fact, that is exactly what he tried to do. Each time he wrote out new resolutions, he marked his progress along the same lines in his diary.6 The two documents — the diary and the “Resolutions” — would have a symbiotic relationship. As he yearned for holiness and found himself wanting, he would make new resolutions, and then monitor his actual progress in his personal journal, keeping track of his successes and failures along the way.

Over time, however, Edwards found that his failures were far more in number and of a more serious kind than he had feared.

Jan. 20, sabbath day. At night. The last week I was sunk so low, that I fear it will be a long time, ’ere I shall be recovered. I fell exceedingly low in the weekly account. I find my heart so deceitful, that I am almost discouraged from making any more resolutions. Wherein have I been negligent in the week past; and how could I have done better, to help the dreadful, low estate in which I am sunk?7

As the spring turned to summer, existential questions began to threaten his spiritual tranquility, and he began to experience trepidations and palpitations of heart related to the defense of his master’s thesis — his Quaestio — and the looming necessity of securing a full-time pastoral call. That in addition to coping with the heartache of falling in love with a younger, beautiful girl, Sarah.8

As it turned out, these first forty or so resolutions wouldn’t be enough to buoy his soul as he dealt with these somewhat typical coming-of-age strains on heart and mind. His soul ached, and his temptations raged against him. So he wrote more resolutions.

When the heat of the summer of 1723 was at its peak, and the honeybees began to feast upon the goldenrod and sedum plants, Edwards had written a full complement of seventy resolutions. And then suddenly — as abruptly as he had started — he stopped.

He never wrote another resolution again.

‘Resolutions’ as Inspiration

There is no doubt that the “Resolutions” are inspiring. This is why they have been printed over and over again, published in the genre of classical devotional materials.9 Men and women for generations now have felt they have met Edwards personally in this short, tract-length document, resonating with the emerging pastor’s soul-deep yearning for Christ. How can we not be inspired when we read such resolutions?

52. I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.

53. Resolved, to improve every opportunity, when I am in the best and happiest frame of mind, to cast and venture my soul on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust and confide in him, and consecrate myself wholly to him; that from this I may have assurance of my safety, knowing that I confide in my Redeemer.10

But what so many readers (including the present writer) find so profound and awe-inspiring from the pen of the forthcoming prodigy, Edwards felt as a burden on his soul. The more he resolved, the more he failed himself and his God. He couldn’t live up to his own standards. He simply could not will himself to breathe the thin air of spiritual Zion all the time, dwelling long on the mountain of God’s holy presence. Since his resolutions pointed out his own sin as much as they pointed toward his own faithfulness, Edwards needed to find another way forward before his resolve fled away with the retreating summer sunlight.

Looking Outward

Some Edwards scholars believe that he quit writing his resolutions on August 17, 1723, because his “canon” was complete with the round biblical number of seventy. I think this conjecture is somewhat plausible. But I also think there is more to it. My own studies of Edwards’s personal writings have led me to conclude that he simply could not bear the pressures of his own heightened determinations.11

“To resolve was one thing, but to depend and rely upon Christ was another.”

When taken alone, the “Resolutions” are a powerful document indeed — even (and rightly) inspiring. But when reading his diary alongside the “Resolutions,” as synchronous and complementary documents, it seems that Edwards was building up spiritual pressures that his own soul was not able to withstand. The process of continually grading himself on paper may have become more than he could tolerate. Such periods of deep self-evaluation, when most honest, only proved that Edwards needed more and more grace. In other words, he could not live up to his own standards. To resolve was one thing, but to depend and rely upon Christ was another. And so, Edwards grew in his understanding of the daily necessity of dependence upon divine grace as superior to determination and resolution alone.

Along with this deepening understanding of his own sin and God’s grace, Edwards simply got busier and had less time to gaze in the spiritual mirror of his “Resolutions” and diary. His responsibilities in the church grew significantly when he was ordained to serve under Solomon Stoddard, and then again when he eventually became the solo pastor of the Northampton Church, one of the most significant congregations in the region. He did end up marrying the beautiful young woman he fell in love with as a teen. They had a large number of children, even by eighteenth-century standards (ten!). Edwards became preoccupied with preaching innumerable sermons, writing treatises, drafting letters, meeting with other ministers, and counseling his people’s distraught souls. He found that he was simultaneously growing as a believer, as a husband, as a father, and as a pastor.

And God was at work too in amazing ways that far transcended his own inward fascinations. A true revival began to occur — first in Northampton (1735) and then all across the Colonies (1740–42). Edwards had less occasion and opportunity to stew anxiously inwardly, even as it became more apparent that God was working outwardly all around him. This change in focus seems to me to be evidence of his spiritual maturity rather than any loss of devotion.

Relentless Reliance

At about age 40, a more mature Edwards could look back upon his 19-year-old self and write,

My longings after God and holiness, were much increased. Pure and humble, holy and heavenly Christianity, appeared exceeding amiable to me. I felt in me a burning desire to be in everything a complete Christian; and conformed to the blessed image of Christ: and that I might live in all things, according to the pure, sweet and blessed rules of the gospel. I had an eager thirsting after progress in these things. My longings after it, put me upon pursuing and pressing after them. It was my continual strife day and night, and constant inquiry, how I should be more holy, and live more holily, and more becoming a child of God, and disciple of Christ.12

True enough, the New York period had been a time of spiritual ecstasy for him. A veritable mountaintop. Edwards put these thoughts and other reflections together in a document that would become known as his “Personal Narrative.”13 This is one of the most important extant documents regarding Edwards’s own mature spiritual introspection. His own son-in-law, Aaron Burr Sr., had asked him to share more deeply about his soul’s growth over the years. In a key statement regarding his spiritual ecstasies during his period of time in New York City, Edwards makes a significant admission about the time in which the “Resolutions” were drafted. Listen carefully for the way Edwards acknowledges some imbalance in his spiritual life:

I sought an increase of grace and holiness, and that I might live an holy life, with vastly more earnestness, than ever I sought grace, before I had it. I used to be continually examining myself, and studying and contriving for likely ways and means, how I should live holily, with far greater diligence and earnestness, than ever I pursued anything in my life: but with too great a dependence on my own strength; which afterwards proved a great damage to me. My experience had not then taught me, as it has done since, my extreme feebleness and impotence, every manner of way; and the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit, that there was in my heart. However, I went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness; and sweet conformity to Christ.14

In these crucial words, Edwards looks back fondly on the spiritual fervor that he had as a young man. He does not regret the resolutions, nor does he recant any of their lofty spiritual aims. As such, the “Resolutions” were well-founded.

“Growth, we might say, is better tracked over decades and years than weeks and days.”

At the same time, maturity as a husband, father, and pastor was just as necessary to his soul’s growth. He was enabled to see his own heart over a longer period of time than the “Resolutions” allowed him. He recognized that zealous resolve necessarily needs to be balanced by a relentless reliance on God’s ever-patient grace. That lesson would be learned over an extended trajectory of service, suffering, and daily reliance upon God’s goodness for us in Jesus Christ. Growth, we might say, is better tracked over decades and years than weeks and days.

He had learned experientially an incomparable lesson about sanctification: Jonathan Edwards needed more than his seventy resolutions for Christ. He needed Christ himself.

Jesus gave his church the Great Commission almost two thousand years ago. Today, the task of making disciples of all nations remains the same. However, the world in which we live is in a constant state of change, so the issues affecting how we obey that commission change from decade to decade (and even from year to year). The last decade has been no exception. Based on conversations with missionary leaders stationed around the globe, several critical issues and trends are evident in 2024.

Before looking at the trends, let me clarify that this article is based on the conviction that the missionary task consists of effective entry, evangelism, disciple-making, healthy church formation, leadership development, and exit to partnership (Foundations, 13). Those disciples and churches are taught to obey everything Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:20), so all other biblical dimensions of Christian discipleship are included. This task is to be carried out among all peoples and in all places of the earth until Jesus returns. This understanding of the missionary task lies behind the issues and trends listed below.

Trend 1: Christianity’s Shifting Center of Gravity

Christianity’s center of gravity is now in the Global South and in East Asia. The largest missionary-sending country in the world remains the United States, but South Korea comes in second. This trend is poised to continue in the years ahead, as the population of Africa continues to grow exponentially. In light of the growing secularization of Europe and North America, with declining church membership and loosening theological convictions, the Global South and East Asia will likely play an increasingly prominent role in global missions and in the theological climate of the global church.

Prosperity ‘Gospel’

This trend leads to the most pressing issue in missions today. The churches of Latin America, Africa, and Asia are increasingly permeated by the prosperity gospel. In fact, it would be safe to say that prosperity teaching is the most common form of “Christian” thought and practice in many of these areas. Prosperity teaching may prove to be the greatest threat to biblical Christianity in the twenty-first century, on a level with Gnosticism in the early church.

This form of teaching easily syncretizes the animistic worldview that lies behind most expressions of formal religion in the Two-Thirds World. Religious practice is used to manipulate the spiritual world to obtain earthly blessings. In “Christian” prosperity teaching, both the true gospel and serious discipleship are lost. Partly because of weak discipleship and inadequate theological education by missionary-sending groups, this destructive movement threatens two centuries of fruitful missionary service in the Global South and East Asia.

The last few decades of Western evangelical missionary effort have been focused on unengaged and unreached people groups. This emphasis should certainly continue. The urgent need of the present hour, however, is to combine this attention to the unreached with the delivery of rigorous theological education and church-based discipleship in already-evangelized areas.

Mission Fields to Mission Forces

There is a positive side to the demographic shift of evangelical Christianity to the South and East. As already mentioned, South Korea is now a major contributor to the missionary enterprise. Other East Asian missionaries are also making their efforts felt around the globe. Some places that were recently mission fields are becoming mission forces. For example, missionaries from Latin America have proven to be highly effective in the Islamic world. Perhaps God is redeeming the seven-hundred-year Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by giving Hispanic Christians unusual insight into Islamic cultures. The African church is also beginning to awaken to its strength and its global responsibilities.

An ongoing trend in global mission will be its increasing internationalization. As the formerly Christian West slides increasingly into spiritual weakness, missionaries from the Two-Thirds World will play an increasingly greater role in the task. This shift raises two issues. One is that the West needs to be re-evangelized, and missionaries from the South and East need to join in that task. The second is that Western missionaries need to invest time and resources into mobilizing and equipping the missionary-sending capacity of the newer churches in the South and East.

Trend 2: Technological Advances

The rapid development of technology continues to influence mission efforts around the world. The global shutdown that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the Internet is a powerful medium for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training when direct personal contact is limited. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds amazing promise for translating the Bible and other Christian materials.

On the other hand, hostile governments have shown the power of technology to monitor evangelistic activities, expel gospel workers, and persecute local believers. The years following the outbreak of COVID have shown that forces antagonistic to the spread of the gospel have both an increased willingness and an enhanced ability to disrupt Christian missionary efforts, both in their own countries and beyond. AI in particular is a two-edged sword, and mission practitioners cannot ignore it. The rapid (and ongoing) development of AI is one of the most significant trends of the last few years, and the issues it raises will demand careful thought and attention in the years ahead.

Trend 3: Increased Access and Support

Due to technological advances, churches in the developed world have unprecedented access to mission fields around the world, in terms of both communication and travel. Local churches are currently invested in the task of missions like never before in church history. This is a good development. Research has shown that Christians who go on short-term mission trips give substantially more to missionary support and are much more likely to become long-term missionaries themselves.

There is a negative side to this trend, however. Christians, by and large, are generous people. Western Christians, on average, are wealthy by global standards. When they see needs, they like to give their resources to meet those needs. But that generosity can have unintended consequences. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evangelical missionaries learned about those consequences the hard way, and principles of indigenization were forged to preserve the health of the new churches. Those principles became standard practice for evangelical missionaries around the world. (See, for example, Roland Allen’s 1912 book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?)

“Some places that were recently mission fields are becoming mission forces.”

However, many Western churches directly involved in the mission field often know neither the lessons learned nor the principles derived from those lessons. The result is that many new churches in the Two-Thirds World are awash in foreign money, and the results have been destructive for church health. The trend is unhelpful foreign financial involvement in church life on the mission field. The issue is how to channel this well-meant generosity in ways that do not create unhealthy dependency.

Trend 4: International Churches

Another trend is the increased interest in planting international churches globally. The last few decades have seen a welcome increase in attention given to ecclesiology in the West, with enhanced concern for biblical church structures and overall church health. A recent feature of this movement has been increased engagement in planting international churches in global cities around the world.

These churches have real value. In an increasingly mobile age, global cities house people from every country under the sun. These expatriates (“expats”) usually return to their home countries at some point. Churches that actively evangelize these expats perform a valuable service. In addition, healthy international churches provide a context for expat Christians to grow in their faith and to be nurtured in their outreach to the educational, business, or diplomatic contexts in which they work.

Danger comes, however, when these international churches come to be regarded as a primary means of fulfilling the Great Commission. Uncontextualized churches ministering in a foreign language (like English) have limited impact on most unreached peoples. Even in global cities, fewer people can have deep conversations in English than most expats realize, and international churches look and feel far more foreign than is evident to anyone who has not gone deep in the local language and culture. Most of those with no access to the gospel will be reached only in their heart language by workers willing to go deep in the local community and culture. They will be reached through planting healthy, indigenous, reproducing churches that are self-supported, self-governed, and self-propagating.

Planting international churches is a good thing. However, heart-language work aimed at planting indigenous churches remains the central component of the missionary task. This focus should be primary in global missions, with international churches serving as another tool in the toolbox.

Trend 5: Decreasing Missionary Resilience

Not too long ago, missionaries left for the field without much hope of ever seeing their homes and families again. Sometimes packing belongings in their own coffins, they would sail for months, expecting hardship and even death for the sake of the gospel. Their perseverance in the face of suffering laid the foundation for the global expansion of the church. Today, it is not uncommon for missionaries to return to their home country after a few years or even months. Many missionary candidates seem ill-equipped for the stress of culture shock or the rigors of life overseas. This points to a troubling trend: missionary resilience is a growing issue on the mission field.

The current cultural climate in the West encourages entitlement, resentment, and fragility rather than grit, perseverance, and sacrifice. This cultural trend inevitably infiltrates the church and affects those whom the church sends as missionaries. The need for member care, both during the application process for missionary service and after arriving on the field, continues to go up.

Churches aiming to send their people into missionary service will need to address these issues at every level of the discipleship process. Mission agencies will find themselves dealing with subconscious entitlement and emotional fragility more and more in the years to come, and thus have opportunities now to begin building structures for ongoing training, evaluation, and care.

Trend 6: Rising Global Population

One final trend needs to be mentioned. Seventy years ago, there were fewer than three billion people on the planet. Today, there are more than eight billion. Some of the highest rates of growth are among peoples and in places where the gospel is known the least.

At present, global evangelization is not keeping pace with global population growth. Of the eight billion people alive today, around four billion are in unreached people groups, and many more have never heard the gospel even if they technically have access to it. Meanwhile, evangelicals are well under 10 percent of the world’s total population.

That means we have a great opportunity before us. Most people in the world have yet to hear and believe the only message that can save them. The missionary task is urgent. The greatest issue in global missions today is obedience. Who will go?

Jesus remains King. His mission will be fulfilled. Just as the task of mission does not change, neither does the bedrock certainty of his sovereignty. Christians today can embark on global mission with joyful confidence, knowing that our God reigns and his plan for the ages will be completed. We need to be wise in our dealings with the world, so we need to act on the trends and issues we see develop. However, we can do so with boldness, knowing that his royal rule can never fail.

If you could capture in a word what it feels like to live as a fallen human, far from Eden, what might you say? Sorrowful, perhaps, or broken. Frustrating. Dark. There’s no one right answer. But one of the most profound appears in the famous opening lines of Augustine’s Confessions: restless. “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (1.1.1).

Deep in the human soul, a spirit of restlessness runs like an underground river: often unseen, often unrecognized, often denied, yet rumbling beneath so much of what we say, dream, and do.

We easily mistake the bone-deep gnaw for something more superficial. We need a few days off, we think — or a better work-life balance, or a new job or apartment, or more recognition from our peers, or more understanding from our spouse. The advertising industry taps into the ache and offers a thousand ways to dam the restless flow: new experiences, new places, new things. Sometimes we buy it.

These are whispers, snatches, songs in the wind: echoes of the thing we want, but not the thing itself. They may bring a measure of rest to mind or body (for a time), but they can no more dam the river than a stick can stop the Niagara. We long for something deeper.

We want a rest that lasts beyond certain times (nights, weekends) and extends beyond certain places (bed, vacation spots). We want a rest that leads us like a pillar of fire and follows us like the goodness and mercy of God. We want a rest that wells up from within like living water. We want an unending Sabbath of the soul.

Our Aching Restlessness

But why the ache? Why the inner gnaw? Why the endless running restlessness?

In the beginning, God weaved rest into the fabric of his unfallen world. Soul deep and heaven high, rest filled Eden’s very air. For God, after working for six days, crowned creation with the seventh: “On the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). “It is finished,” God said, and all creation enjoyed his rest.

But the garden is long gone now. And between us and Eden’s rest stand cherubim holding a flaming sword (Genesis 3:24). When Adam and Eve left Eden’s gates, they left not only a place, but a whole posture of soul. They left the restful garden and entered a world without the seventh day.

Outside God’s presence, our little attempts at rest — our sleep-ins and successes, our days off and entertainments, our life balances and purchases — are so many seeds planted in granite. We sow and dig and water, but the soil of our souls can’t hold the seeds; we look for rest and reap restlessness.

Exiled from Eden, we need the God of the garden to once again become our God; we need the Lord of rest to be our Lord and Rest.

Weekly Whisper

Hope eventually came in the form of a commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” God told an Israel freshly redeemed from Egypt, that land of anti-Eden restlessness.

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 20:8–11)

From then on, every seventh day became a witness to Eden’s lost world. And a whisper of what might be again.

Yet it was only ever a whisper. For the week’s seventh day was not the seventh day; however much rest the Sabbath offered, it could not stop the river of human restlessness. The Sinai and wilderness generation, for all the Sabbaths they experienced, did not enter God’s true rest (Psalm 95:11; Hebrews 4:2). Later generations too easily profaned the Sabbath day — working, planning profits, calling the day a duty rather than a delight (Isaiah 58:13–14; Ezekiel 20:13–24; Amos 8:5). And in time, Israel’s leaders would lay burdens on the people too heavy for any Sabbath to lift (Matthew 23:4; Mark 2:27).

And so, the Sabbath was a pointer, a prophecy, a partial melody filled with promise. As Israel’s animal sacrifices foretold the Lamb of God, and as the temple anticipated the Word made flesh, and as every king and priest shadowed the outline of the Messiah, so the weekly Sabbath spoke of a rest far greater than Saturday — and of a Lord from whose heart it would flow.

Lord of the Sabbath

Of course, a spiritually attentive Israelite always knew that soul-deep rest came not from the Sabbath itself, but from the Sabbath’s Lord. The day was “a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:9), “a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord” (Exodus 31:15), a time to hear God say again, “I, the Lord, sanctify you” (Exodus 31:13). Sabbath rest was a stream in time; God himself was the fountain.

“Follow the stream of the Sabbath and what you find is not a day, but a Lord.”

Audacious, then, were those simple words of the Lord Jesus, spoken to the Pharisees in a Galilean grain field: “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8). Follow the stream of the Sabbath, Pharisees: walk its banks along the centuries — past Sinai, past Egypt, past even the creation week — and what you find is not a day, but a Lord. A Lord now standing in the grain field.

Lest we miss the meaning and magnitude of these words, Matthew tells us that the Sabbath confrontation happened “at that time” — that is, just after Jesus spoke these famous words:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28–29)

Note well that Jesus does not say he will point us toward the rest we long for, or even lead us there himself: he says he will give it to us. As Lord of the Sabbath, the deepest rest lies in his possession — in his gentle Sabbath heart. No longer, then, would the weary and heavy laden look to a day to find rest, but to a person. He is our living, breathing, saving Seventh Day.

Seventh Day for Your Soul

Whatever kind of restlessness runs through your soul; whatever desperate river rumbles beneath your dream of days off, or your grasping for career advancement, or your social-media obsessions; whatever Edenic ache you carry within, Jesus’s invitation holds: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Jesus holds a rest for every kind of restlessness, a Sabbath calm for every care, a seventh day for every soul.”

Do you long for righteousness? He has already won it (Romans 3:26). Do you yearn for an identity? He calls you his own (Hebrews 2:11). Is success what you seek? He shares his victory (1 Corinthians 15:57). Do worries keep you awake? His shoulders can carry them (1 Peter 5:7). Do you lack others’ favor? You still have his (Romans 8:31). Do you feel trapped in the life you have? He is a world always new (John 21:25). Jesus holds a rest for every kind of restlessness, a Sabbath calm for every care, a seventh day for every soul.

So how can we find our rest in him? We can begin by learning to call our longings for rest by their real names. When we begin to feel our familiar restlessness — as insecurity rises, or an impulse to buy something itches, or a desire to escape consumes us — we can say that what we really want is not praise, not possessions, not a change of job or city, and not even rest in the abstract, but Jesus, our Sabbath Lord. For ultimately, to say “I long for rest” means “I long for Christ.”

Ocean Depth of Happy Rest

Of course, the rest we know now in Jesus is only a foretaste of the greater rest to come. The Puritan Christopher Love once wrote, “Here in this world, joy . . . entereth into you, but in the world to come you shall enter into joy” (The Genius of Puritanism, 106). So too with rest: here in this world, rest enters into us, but in the world to come, we will enter into rest.

One day soon, rest will be not only the stream of living water within, but the sea of living water without. We will walk through a world where rest rises from the soil and drops from the clouds. For the Lord of the Sabbath himself will reign in that land, bringing the seventh day back to an earth even better than Eden. He is the “ocean depth of happy rest,” as the hymn puts it, and forever his waves will wash over us.