Reduce Me to Love: Finding Rest in Pokhara, Nepal

Dashain is one of the most prominent Hindu festivals celebrated in Nepal. During the festival, quite literally everything is closed & vacant: grocery stores, restaurants, the women’s center where we were teaching, and even our slums, where the kiddos left Kathmandu for the villages. Although bummed to miss our ladies and kids for a week, we were grateful for the opportunity to use this time to visit Pokhara. Our squad leader’s sister lives there with her husband and three teenage boys, so we took a 6-hour bus ride to go visit.

Immersed in luscious greenery, inhabiting a beautiful blue lake, and surrounded by the vast Himalayan mountains, Pokhara is a fairy tale of sorts. A place that would serve as a safe haven, a rest stop from the quick-moving schedule of constantly pouring out. A place that would silence our schedules to instead be filled with rejuvenation only the Father could provide.

Here, we chose to rest and were reduced to love.

We are not tied to what we do, achieve or produce, but who we are as children in the center of the Father’s love. We recognize our identity in Christ before we do anything for Christ; who we are precedes what we do.

We reduce to love and rest in His identity.

Although wildly countercultural in a fast-paced world, we rest. We rest because God Himself rested. He says, “come to me, all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And, if He needed to rest, then how much more do we need to rest?

So, we reduce to love and rest in His will.

On the sixth day, God created man (Genesis 1:31); on the seventh day, God rested (Genesis 2:2).  God created man and then the next day gave him rest. We don’t earn rest, nor do we work for rest; instead, we work from rest. We rest because of whose we are, not what we do.

We reduce to love and rest in His identity.

We stop moving and listen. We take ourselves out of our own way. We refuse the need for control that is eating us alive and leaving us starving. For His Kingdom to come, mine has to go.

We reduce to love and rest in His will.

We rest in His presence, His will, His throne room. We rest knowing He is speaking to us and revealing His will in every moment of every day. We rest and listen, becoming more & more like love.

With that heart posture, here’s what a day of Sabbath rest looks like in Pokhara, Nepal.

Sometimes Sabbath is worshiping from the rooftops to the mountains, “…the earth and everything on it, the seas and everything in them; You keep them all alive; heaven’s angels worship you” (Nehemiah 9:6 MSG). 

Sometimes it’s perusing a woman’s handmade jewelry.

Then sitting with her and listening to her story as a Tibetan refugee, telling us what He has done for her (Psalm 66:16).

Sometimes it’s skateboarding down the street just to feel the exhilaration, to rejoice & be glad (Psalm 118:24).

Sometimes it’s sitting on a boat in the middle of lake, just to feel the serenity & let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts (Colossians 3:15).

Sometimes it’s mountain biking & going across a rickety bridge, tying exhilaration with a little risk.

Aaand that risk was in the drop off. Overwhelming beauty, where the trees of the forest sing for joy (Psalm 96:12).

Or it’s fishing with the locals, just because. 

Sometimes it’s swinging on a contrived bamboo swing, laying our agenda and what we wanted to do today for His plan (which obviously included JOY). 

Always, it’s sitting in the presence of the Lord.

Join me in prayer: Lord, thank you that You want our hearts before You want our service; You are more interested in who we are becoming than what we are achieving. Thank you that what we do doesn’t define who we are, but You do. Give us rest as we lay our burdens down at the feet of the cross. Thank you for Your unexplainable peace in the middle of chaos; thank You for rest. Amen.