May 8, 2025 • 12 mins
What can a hummingbird’s flight, jellyfish’s life cycle, and bee’s waggle dance reveal about a restful and flourishing life? Author Eryn Lynum is a certified Master Naturalist, educator, and national speaker. Through her six-week Bible Study, The Nature of Rest: What the Bible and CreationTeach Us About Sabbath Living, you'll explore the deep roots of rest found in Scripture and Enjoy the wonderous creation of experiencing the outdoors while unearthing attainable rest for everyday life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Okay. So, Tom, I want to talk to you about
all the birds around my house that seeing such beautiful
songs that build nests on my porch, in my fig tree,
in my ferns, in my bushes, and I think, does
everybody have birds like this all around their houses?
S2 (00:17):
Well, we definitely do. And you know, I've, I commented
on the bird song here in the Tennessee Valley. It
is truly beautiful. I come from the Pacific Northwest where
birdsong sounds like this.
S1 (00:27):
Ah.
S2 (00:28):
And that's really it, right? We just don't have that.
Just all the different varieties of birds in the area.
My wife and I are beekeeping now, so. So we're
getting to see, you know, birds and bees working together, uh,
in nature. And that's, that's the end of that conversation
right there. But there's something about being in nature that
kind of pulls us into a state, or at least
(00:50):
focus on rest. It's not chaotic like life. It kind
of calms you down.
S3 (00:54):
Yeah, it gives you peace.
S1 (00:56):
I delight in it. It truly is a delight to
go outside and see living creatures running around. And Aaron
Lineham has written a book. It's called The Nature of
Rest What the Bible and Creation Teach Us About Sabbath Living.
So I'm so excited to have her in and to
have her talk about this, because she's a master naturalist, educator,
(01:17):
and speaker, and she even has a podcast for kids. So, uh, Aaron,
thank you so much for joining us from Colorado.
S4 (01:26):
Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
S2 (01:28):
So just the picture that we're learning a little bit
about this. You got this this picture of the hummingbird
right there on the cover of the book. So let
me ask you these questions that are just posed. And
I wanted to see where you go with this. What
actually can a hummingbirds flight or jellyfish's life cycle or
the Bee's waggle dance, which I've actually had an opportunity
to see. What does that reveal about a restful and
(01:50):
a flourishing life?
S4 (01:52):
Um, let's start with the hummingbird. So when you picture
a hummingbird, we don't often think about rest, right? You're
thinking about motion. And constantly on the go. They will
visit 1000 to 2000 flowers every day. And so a
hummingbird is this this image of motion and activity. Their
little wings will be about 70 times every second. And
(02:14):
to fuel that their little itty bitty hearts, they have
to beat about 1200 times a minute. But what sustains
the hummingbird in all of its work is a beautiful
strategy called torpor. And torpor is kind of like a
mini hibernation, where the hummingbird is going to lower its
body temperature by around 50°F, and it goes into this
(02:36):
deeply restful, unresponsive state to where when people have come
across hummingbirds in torpor, they've thought that they were deceased
because they're so unresponsive. But it's this constant regular rhythmic
rest that allows the hummingbird to conserve energy and continue
its work. And so, you know, often in society we
(02:57):
think about rest as stopping is like this halt. And
so we might see it as ineffective or boring or
even lazy. But in the hummingbird, we have this beautiful picture. No,
it is this harmony of deep, intentional rest and fruitful work.
And I believe we were designed for the same. Not
(03:17):
to stop all of our activity, but simply to come
back into alignment with God's pace and really aligning our
agendas with his.
S1 (03:27):
Wow. I could listen to you all day.
S2 (03:29):
Yeah, yeah yeah. And alright, so that's hummingbirds because we
have those buzzing around our property as well. And you're right,
just it seems like activity in motion, but seems like
God has designed us for this rhythm of work and
then rest and then work and then rest. I'm going
to ask you about the jellyfish now, because we started
(03:50):
with hummingbirds. I want to find out about the jellyfish.
Tell us about that.
S4 (03:54):
So often, you know, when we look at Scripture, we
think about rest in just a few places. But really
rest is all throughout Scripture. And one thing we see
is that it is intimately tied to the concept of
salvation that God has given us eternal rest. And so
with the jellyfish specifically in that chapter, I use the
analogy of the immortal jellyfish, and the immortal jellyfish has
(04:17):
this incredible ability to revert to childhood. And so a
jellyfish in general, they have two main life stages where
they begin as a juvenile polyp, which almost looks like
a plant in the ocean, where they are secured to
a surface, and then they kind of bloom into their
adult medusae. And that's what you think of with jellyfish,
(04:38):
with the blob and all the tentacles. Well, the immortal
jellyfish can actually go backwards in that process and go
from the adult Medusa back to the juvenile polyp. By
doing this, scientists believe that they can just continue living
because if they are sick or harmed or feel threatened,
they'll revert to that that polyp state. And so they
(04:59):
honestly don't know how long these jellyfish can live. They're
the only creature that they have discovered with this ability
to do this. And what this points to is, you know,
like even the immortal jellyfish has an end because we
know this. This planet is broken by the curse of sin,
so even the immortal jellyfish has an end date. But
we were created with eternity planted in our hearts. And
(05:21):
I believe that biblical rest is one way that we
can experience some of that here on earth. Because yes,
God promises us eternal rest, but also he makes it
very clear all throughout Scripture, and we see it in
the life of Christ that he also has daily practical
rest available for us here and now.
S2 (05:42):
The Nature of Rest is the book that is written
by Aaron Lineham, and we've been learning about a hummingbird
and their flight and and the way that they're created
to work, but then also to rest deeply about the
immortal jellyfish. We're learning about this. But, Aaron, I've got
to ask you about the bee's waggle dance and how
that kind of relates to kind of the rest that
(06:02):
we can enter into, into the Lord, because I've had
the privilege of actually seeing that happen.
S4 (06:07):
Isn't that such a funny word for it, the waggle dance?
S2 (06:10):
Yeah, I always.
S4 (06:11):
Think, who got to come up with this name? Well,
when we think about bees, you know, it always comes
to mind. The busy bee and bees are they're so busy.
And throughout their lives they have all these different jobs.
They're always busy in the hive with specific purposes, which
is just incredible to see. But bees also, as busy
as they are, they rely on rest. And one way
(06:32):
we see that is the forager bees who are in
charge of going out and finding good nectar and pollen.
When they come back to the hive, they have to
somehow communicate to the other bees where this pollen and
nectar is. And so they do this incredible movement called
the waggle dance. And it is like a figure eight
flight pattern. And scientists believe that this waggle dance communicates
(06:56):
to the other bees three specific things one, what direction
the flowers are in that they have found, two how
far those flowers are, and three they believe it might
even speak to the quality of the nectar that has
been found. Isn't that incredible?
S1 (07:14):
That is.
S4 (07:14):
You think about it. This has to be such a
detailed and delicate waggle dance, and they cannot perform it
accurately if they're tired, if they're burnt out bees and
so even bees to go about their busy work to
communicate with their hive mates, they depend on regular rest.
S1 (07:33):
Wow. God is amazing.
S2 (07:35):
Yeah. Aaron, if I could just just, um, blurt this
out right now. You know, you can't be a beekeeper.
Like we're learning how to be and not believe in
a God who designed all of this. Because stuff like this,
all of the different jobs and and just watching a
hive work together does not just happen.
S4 (07:53):
No. Amen.
S3 (07:54):
Well, okay, so.
S1 (07:55):
We we're learning about nature and rest that's built into
the activity. So we're nature. We're God's creation, but we
are living in such busy times. Do you think it's
realistic for us to take Sabbath rest?
S4 (08:10):
Absolutely I do. And I know that's a countercultural thing.
It's very against culture. But Hebrews tells us strive toward rest.
We're supposed to work toward rest. And what we find is,
you know, in society we're often told, oh, rest is
optional or it's lazy or it's ineffective. But what my
family found, we have been celebrating Sabbath for over three
years now. And what we found is it's one of
(08:33):
the most powerful things that we can do for our family,
for our faith, for our work. When we took this
risk on rest, because I believe that rest and Sabbath
are always a step of faith. And when we took
that step of faith, we found we quickly became more effective,
more impactful, more creative, more fruitful. And God designed it
(08:54):
that way. We see it all throughout nature. Like we
talked about the hummingbirds and the bees and the immortal jellyfish.
And we see it all throughout our hinted at during creation,
established in the wilderness, modeled by the life of Christ
and fulfilled at Calvary. God truly designed us to thrive
through rest.
S2 (09:13):
This is truly beautiful. And you're right, it runs countercultural
to us because we equate rest with laziness. But that's
not what Scripture does it really wants? God wants us
to enter into his rest. Now, I'm just going to
ask you more kind of a personal question, uh, specifically
about your journey. You had a diagnosis of Addison's disease
(09:35):
when you were very young. How did that lead you
into more of a restful approach to life?
S4 (09:42):
Yeah. So I often say that our family's journey into
rest began about three years ago when we began celebrating Sabbath.
But really, God was leading me into a deeply restful
life years ago without me even knowing it. When I
was 14 years old, I was preparing to go overseas
for the first time. I had never before even stepped
foot on an airplane, and now I was going to
(10:03):
fly to Africa and spend two months in the bush
of Africa. And before you do something like that, you
need to go to the doctor and get a checkup.
And so my parents brought me in and we had
no reason to believe anything was wrong. No strange medical history.
I had been a little bit lethargic and dizzy at times, but,
you know, I was 14 and so we chalked it
up to growing up. But when the nurse checked my
(10:26):
blood pressure that day, it was 56 over 48, extremely low.
The doctor later told my parents it was the lowest
he had ever seen in a living person. Not not
really a record you want to have with the doctor.
And so, you know, this was the first this was
the beginning of a very long medical journey. But also
I didn't know it back then, but my first step
(10:49):
toward a deeply restful life. I was soon diagnosed with
Addison's disease. And Addison's disease is where your adrenal glands
have zero function. So my adrenal glands have not worked
now since I was probably about 13 years old. And
your adrenal glands, they produce, of course, adrenaline, but also
key hormones including cortisol and cortisol is your stress hormone.
(11:11):
God knew that we were going to live in this
breakneck pace world with a lot of stress. And so
he designed our bodies with this system, these adrenal glands,
to produce cortisol, to deal and cope with that stress.
But my body cannot do that. And so at age 14,
stress became fatal to me and I had to learn
at that young age, my parents just really coached me
(11:34):
in this. And how to identify stress and how to
step back, and how to cast all my anxieties on
the Lord and bring everything to him in prayer. And
so he was truly leading me into this long ago.
But the fact is, like, you don't have to fry
your adrenal glands to need rest. But we look around
at society, and although very few people have Addison's disease,
(11:57):
many people have adrenal fatigue. Where they are, they're burnt
out and they have so taxed these natural systems that
God gave us. And so he never meant us to
live at this pace, at this go, go go do
do do hustle and hurry. And as we step back
into his rhythms and his practices of rest, it's one
(12:19):
way that we combat the curse of this broken world.
One way that we step back into his life giving design.
Okay. So, Tom, I want to talk to you about
all the birds around my house that seeing such beautiful
songs that build nests on my porch, in my fig tree,
in my ferns, in my bushes, and I think, does
everybody have birds like this all around their houses?
S2 (00:17):
Well, we definitely do. And you know, I've, I commented
on the bird song here in the Tennessee Valley. It
is truly beautiful. I come from the Pacific Northwest where
birdsong sounds like this.
S1 (00:27):
Ah.
S2 (00:28):
And that's really it, right? We just don't have that.
Just all the different varieties of birds in the area.
My wife and I are beekeeping now, so. So we're
getting to see, you know, birds and bees working together, uh,
in nature. And that's, that's the end of that conversation
right there. But there's something about being in nature that
kind of pulls us into a state, or at least
(00:50):
focus on rest. It's not chaotic like life. It kind
of calms you down.
S3 (00:54):
Yeah, it gives you peace.
S1 (00:56):
I delight in it. It truly is a delight to
go outside and see living creatures running around. And Aaron
Lineham has written a book. It's called The Nature of
Rest What the Bible and Creation Teach Us About Sabbath Living.
So I'm so excited to have her in and to
have her talk about this, because she's a master naturalist, educator,
(01:17):
and speaker, and she even has a podcast for kids. So, uh, Aaron,
thank you so much for joining us from Colorado.
S4 (01:26):
Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
S2 (01:28):
So just the picture that we're learning a little bit
about this. You got this this picture of the hummingbird
right there on the cover of the book. So let
me ask you these questions that are just posed. And
I wanted to see where you go with this. What
actually can a hummingbirds flight or jellyfish's life cycle or
the Bee's waggle dance, which I've actually had an opportunity
to see. What does that reveal about a restful and
(01:50):
a flourishing life?
S4 (01:52):
Um, let's start with the hummingbird. So when you picture
a hummingbird, we don't often think about rest, right? You're
thinking about motion. And constantly on the go. They will
visit 1000 to 2000 flowers every day. And so a
hummingbird is this this image of motion and activity. Their
little wings will be about 70 times every second. And
(02:14):
to fuel that their little itty bitty hearts, they have
to beat about 1200 times a minute. But what sustains
the hummingbird in all of its work is a beautiful
strategy called torpor. And torpor is kind of like a
mini hibernation, where the hummingbird is going to lower its
body temperature by around 50°F, and it goes into this
(02:36):
deeply restful, unresponsive state to where when people have come
across hummingbirds in torpor, they've thought that they were deceased
because they're so unresponsive. But it's this constant regular rhythmic
rest that allows the hummingbird to conserve energy and continue
its work. And so, you know, often in society we
(02:57):
think about rest as stopping is like this halt. And
so we might see it as ineffective or boring or
even lazy. But in the hummingbird, we have this beautiful picture. No,
it is this harmony of deep, intentional rest and fruitful work.
And I believe we were designed for the same. Not
(03:17):
to stop all of our activity, but simply to come
back into alignment with God's pace and really aligning our
agendas with his.
S1 (03:27):
Wow. I could listen to you all day.
S2 (03:29):
Yeah, yeah yeah. And alright, so that's hummingbirds because we
have those buzzing around our property as well. And you're right,
just it seems like activity in motion, but seems like
God has designed us for this rhythm of work and
then rest and then work and then rest. I'm going
to ask you about the jellyfish now, because we started
(03:50):
with hummingbirds. I want to find out about the jellyfish.
Tell us about that.
S4 (03:54):
So often, you know, when we look at Scripture, we
think about rest in just a few places. But really
rest is all throughout Scripture. And one thing we see
is that it is intimately tied to the concept of
salvation that God has given us eternal rest. And so
with the jellyfish specifically in that chapter, I use the
analogy of the immortal jellyfish, and the immortal jellyfish has
(04:17):
this incredible ability to revert to childhood. And so a
jellyfish in general, they have two main life stages where
they begin as a juvenile polyp, which almost looks like
a plant in the ocean, where they are secured to
a surface, and then they kind of bloom into their
adult medusae. And that's what you think of with jellyfish,
(04:38):
with the blob and all the tentacles. Well, the immortal
jellyfish can actually go backwards in that process and go
from the adult Medusa back to the juvenile polyp. By
doing this, scientists believe that they can just continue living
because if they are sick or harmed or feel threatened,
they'll revert to that that polyp state. And so they
(04:59):
honestly don't know how long these jellyfish can live. They're
the only creature that they have discovered with this ability
to do this. And what this points to is, you know,
like even the immortal jellyfish has an end because we
know this. This planet is broken by the curse of sin,
so even the immortal jellyfish has an end date. But
we were created with eternity planted in our hearts. And
(05:21):
I believe that biblical rest is one way that we
can experience some of that here on earth. Because yes,
God promises us eternal rest, but also he makes it
very clear all throughout Scripture, and we see it in
the life of Christ that he also has daily practical
rest available for us here and now.
S2 (05:42):
The Nature of Rest is the book that is written
by Aaron Lineham, and we've been learning about a hummingbird
and their flight and and the way that they're created
to work, but then also to rest deeply about the
immortal jellyfish. We're learning about this. But, Aaron, I've got
to ask you about the bee's waggle dance and how
that kind of relates to kind of the rest that
(06:02):
we can enter into, into the Lord, because I've had
the privilege of actually seeing that happen.
S4 (06:07):
Isn't that such a funny word for it, the waggle dance?
S2 (06:10):
Yeah, I always.
S4 (06:11):
Think, who got to come up with this name? Well,
when we think about bees, you know, it always comes
to mind. The busy bee and bees are they're so busy.
And throughout their lives they have all these different jobs.
They're always busy in the hive with specific purposes, which
is just incredible to see. But bees also, as busy
as they are, they rely on rest. And one way
(06:32):
we see that is the forager bees who are in
charge of going out and finding good nectar and pollen.
When they come back to the hive, they have to
somehow communicate to the other bees where this pollen and
nectar is. And so they do this incredible movement called
the waggle dance. And it is like a figure eight
flight pattern. And scientists believe that this waggle dance communicates
(06:56):
to the other bees three specific things one, what direction
the flowers are in that they have found, two how
far those flowers are, and three they believe it might
even speak to the quality of the nectar that has
been found. Isn't that incredible?
S1 (07:14):
That is.
S4 (07:14):
You think about it. This has to be such a
detailed and delicate waggle dance, and they cannot perform it
accurately if they're tired, if they're burnt out bees and
so even bees to go about their busy work to
communicate with their hive mates, they depend on regular rest.
S1 (07:33):
Wow. God is amazing.
S2 (07:35):
Yeah. Aaron, if I could just just, um, blurt this
out right now. You know, you can't be a beekeeper.
Like we're learning how to be and not believe in
a God who designed all of this. Because stuff like this,
all of the different jobs and and just watching a
hive work together does not just happen.
S4 (07:53):
No. Amen.
S3 (07:54):
Well, okay, so.
S1 (07:55):
We we're learning about nature and rest that's built into
the activity. So we're nature. We're God's creation, but we
are living in such busy times. Do you think it's
realistic for us to take Sabbath rest?
S4 (08:10):
Absolutely I do. And I know that's a countercultural thing.
It's very against culture. But Hebrews tells us strive toward rest.
We're supposed to work toward rest. And what we find is,
you know, in society we're often told, oh, rest is
optional or it's lazy or it's ineffective. But what my
family found, we have been celebrating Sabbath for over three
years now. And what we found is it's one of
(08:33):
the most powerful things that we can do for our family,
for our faith, for our work. When we took this
risk on rest, because I believe that rest and Sabbath
are always a step of faith. And when we took
that step of faith, we found we quickly became more effective,
more impactful, more creative, more fruitful. And God designed it
(08:54):
that way. We see it all throughout nature. Like we
talked about the hummingbirds and the bees and the immortal jellyfish.
And we see it all throughout our hinted at during creation,
established in the wilderness, modeled by the life of Christ
and fulfilled at Calvary. God truly designed us to thrive
through rest.
S2 (09:13):
This is truly beautiful. And you're right, it runs countercultural
to us because we equate rest with laziness. But that's
not what Scripture does it really wants? God wants us
to enter into his rest. Now, I'm just going to
ask you more kind of a personal question, uh, specifically
about your journey. You had a diagnosis of Addison's disease
(09:35):
when you were very young. How did that lead you
into more of a restful approach to life?
S4 (09:42):
Yeah. So I often say that our family's journey into
rest began about three years ago when we began celebrating Sabbath.
But really, God was leading me into a deeply restful
life years ago without me even knowing it. When I
was 14 years old, I was preparing to go overseas
for the first time. I had never before even stepped
foot on an airplane, and now I was going to
(10:03):
fly to Africa and spend two months in the bush
of Africa. And before you do something like that, you
need to go to the doctor and get a checkup.
And so my parents brought me in and we had
no reason to believe anything was wrong. No strange medical history.
I had been a little bit lethargic and dizzy at times, but,
you know, I was 14 and so we chalked it
up to growing up. But when the nurse checked my
(10:26):
blood pressure that day, it was 56 over 48, extremely low.
The doctor later told my parents it was the lowest
he had ever seen in a living person. Not not
really a record you want to have with the doctor.
And so, you know, this was the first this was
the beginning of a very long medical journey. But also
I didn't know it back then, but my first step
(10:49):
toward a deeply restful life. I was soon diagnosed with
Addison's disease. And Addison's disease is where your adrenal glands
have zero function. So my adrenal glands have not worked
now since I was probably about 13 years old. And
your adrenal glands, they produce, of course, adrenaline, but also
key hormones including cortisol and cortisol is your stress hormone.
(11:11):
God knew that we were going to live in this
breakneck pace world with a lot of stress. And so
he designed our bodies with this system, these adrenal glands,
to produce cortisol, to deal and cope with that stress.
But my body cannot do that. And so at age 14,
stress became fatal to me and I had to learn
at that young age, my parents just really coached me
(11:34):
in this. And how to identify stress and how to
step back, and how to cast all my anxieties on
the Lord and bring everything to him in prayer. And
so he was truly leading me into this long ago.
But the fact is, like, you don't have to fry
your adrenal glands to need rest. But we look around
at society, and although very few people have Addison's disease,
(11:57):
many people have adrenal fatigue. Where they are, they're burnt
out and they have so taxed these natural systems that
God gave us. And so he never meant us to
live at this pace, at this go, go go do
do do hustle and hurry. And as we step back
into his rhythms and his practices of rest, it's one
(12:19):
way that we combat the curse of this broken world.
One way that we step back into his life giving design.
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