This is How I Pause: I Experience God's Rest while Working Outdoors
Christiaan Blignaut is a veterinarian and partner at George Animal Hospital. He is married to Amey, and they have a two-year-old daughter, Alet. In his free time, Christiaan is the chairperson of the Zeal Men’s Movement, a Christian group that focuses on godly identity, adventure and fatherlessness. This week Christiaan shares with us how he pauses.
THIS IS HOW I PAUSE: I EXPERIENCE GOD’S REST WHILE WORKING OUTDOORS
The noise of the wind through the canvas covering the trailer is deafening. The early morning air is cold and dusty on my cheeks. My knuckles are white from clutching the horns of the giant blue wildebeest bull lying in sternal recumbency in front of me. My eyes are firmly fixed on its immobilised muscular form, constantly monitoring the beast’s vital signs. At this moment, with the Landrover rumbling loudly in the background, I feel God’s presence more tangible than I had for days…
Watching the sunrise with a cup of coffee, spending hours alone with God in a quiet room or attending a church service from start to finish without the emergency phone ringing are how most people imagine moments of pause in their lives. While I would love to write about how I, too, found rest in this ideal manner, unfortunately, it is not always the case for me. The reality is that, though I do not recommend the habit, I often find myself hoping for another two or three hours in a day!
Being a partner at a busy mixed species veterinary hospital, having a wife and an energetic two-year-old daughter at home while trying to lead a men’s ministry movement, pausing can often be replaced by fast forwarding. In all honesty, I am writing this while standing outside my little girl’s bedroom door, waiting more than an hour for her to settle down and fall asleep.
Maybe my honesty is not entirely in line with the topic, but I hope my transparency will resonate with others in a similar season. I intentionally call this a season, for I trust God to guide us all to waters of rest where we will spend most of our days. The rat race of this world is not what we were created for, but luckily our Father is relentless and creative in pursuing His children.
I have always felt most alive and comforted by God’s presence while spending time in nature. Being engulfed by the overwhelmingly vast palette of colours, sounds and smells of His masterpiece will always remain the place where the canvas between heaven and earth wears the thinnest. I am reminded of this scripture in Job twelve, from verses seven to ten,
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”
This is how I breathe. This is how I pause. I experience God’s rest while working outdoors. I feel most alive relocating two hundred and sixty-odd kilogram immobilised wildebeest on the back of an open trailer. I experience God’s peace while catching the sunrise over the arid beauty of the Karoo, on my way towards spending a day covered in the dust of a couple of hundred nervous sheep. I hear His soft voice in the rustling of the leaves and the singing birds as I stalk an injured zebra through the dense fynbos. He is there when a proud farmer shows me his lush pastures and makes me smell the fertile red soil, and God comes to rejuvenate my soul as I watch the sunset on a rosy horizon on my way home.
These moments are like cracks in a wall the world built to keep us busy, preoccupied and too tired to meet God. The cracks allow the light to seep through into a lifestyle that can quickly become a dark place. So dark that we cannot see what we are doing and where we are heading with it. Thank God for His light! The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it (John 1:5).
May we all realise that we are the children of a Father that loves us fiercely, that we serve a God of overflowing grace. May we all experience His love, peace and rest, no matter how fast the world around us seems to be moving. He is always present; with us, His yoke is soft, and His burden is light. If you are in a valley, unable to find the hours of solitude you crave, pause and feel the warmth of the light seeping through the cracks. Those moments will energise and inspire you until you reach a summit once more, where you will sit down, relaxing in the complete splendour of His creation.
