Decades ago there was a toy that I called a shape-sorter. Yellow plastic blocks were in the shapes of circles, ovals, squares, triangles and crosses. Each block would only fit in to a corresponding hole in a blue ball. The circle block would not go into the square or the oval hole. It was a good exercise in spatial perception for young children.
In various ways famous quotes from famous people (none of whom I can remember at the moment) have expressed the idea that our hearts can only find rest in God. We would know when our yellow block found the right hole in the blue ball. I imagined it as a moment of “Aah!”.
I can truthfully say that my heart has found a home. Where I am is where I need to be. Yet I don’t know if I would call it just a place of rest. It is also a place where my work has meaning. The restlessness I feel is not because I am out of place, but because there is so much need in the world and I have found my place in which I can spend my energy effectively toward fulfilling that need.
We need both rest and restlessness. Both are holy conditions. We need to be energized and we need to spend our energy in meaningful ways. Certainly there is a restlessness that we feel when we are out of touch with our spiritual core, our God. We know when it is a holy restlessness when it comes from spiritual energy we call love that turns us to work outside ourselves
May we all be blessed with a holy rest for our hearts and a holy restlessness that sends us out to make this world a better place.