What if rest isn’t laziness, but intelligent design?
On this episode of Real Science Radio, Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney welcome Erin Lynham, certified master naturalist and Bible teacher, to explore how the Sabbath isn’t just biblical—it’s biological. Erin shares stunning examples from nature—including fairy shrimp, bees, and hummingbirds—that show how rest is woven into creation at every level. From Genesis to neuroscience, discover how rest isn’t weakness but wisdom by design.
Erin also discusses her children’s podcast Nat Theo, why sparrows might be God’s favorite bird, and how her family’s rhythms of rest have transformed their lives.
Scholars can’t explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune in to Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 05 :
Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 03 :
Today we are joined by someone who literally went out into the woods to find God’s blueprint for rest. Her name is Erin Lynham, certified master naturalist, Bible teacher, and author of the new book, The Nature of Rest.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right, Fred. Erin’s work uncovers how rest isn’t just biblical. It’s biological. From trees to turtles to even fairy shrimp. Yes, that’s a real creature, fairy shrimp. The natural world runs on rhythms of rest. And spoiler alert, those rhythms didn’t evolve from chaotic nothingness. They were designed. We’re talking six days of work and one very intentional pause straight from Genesis.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so if your idea of the Sabbath is catching up on emails, which is, I think, mine, among many other things, well, get ready, as Erin’s going to show us how rest reflects not weakness, but wisdom written into creation. So I’d like to welcome to The Real Science Radio Airwaves, Erin Lenham.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 04 :
Welcome, Erin.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right, so your book… The title of your book is The Nature of Rest. And give us the subtitle.
SPEAKER 01 :
What the Bible and creation teach us about Sabbath living.
SPEAKER 04 :
And so what is that all about? And should I not be checking emails and texts on Saturday? Saturday. Saturday. Isn’t the Sabbath on Saturday?
SPEAKER 01 :
See, that brings up a whole different question of what day do we Sabbath on? Let me answer your first question. Where did this come from? Yeah. Well, I was working as a certified master naturalist, which is basically a fancy term for a nature teacher. And I pursued that training because I wanted to better understand all of God’s materials in creation. Because, you know, we look at the gospels and this is how Jesus taught. He taught using sparrows and wildflowers and olive branches. And so I thought, okay, if this is how Jesus taught biblical truth, then surely this is how we can teach biblical truth, going back to natural theology, which is what science came from originally. And so I’m working as a master naturalist and I’m reading the scriptures. And at the same time, my family just came up against this wall. We were exhausted. My husband and I were running three businesses, homeschooling our four kids. And we came to a place where rest was no longer optional. We saw it as critical and as vital. And then as I’m looking at creation, I begin to see that God designed all of creation to thrive and operate through rhythms of rest. And And also in scripture, it’s not a footnote. The roots of rest run deep and wide throughout the scriptures. So that’s where this whole concept came from. Let’s look at God’s design of rest in scripture and in creation, and then what it can actually look like in our lives.
SPEAKER 03 :
Interesting. All right. So, yeah, I think Genesis chapter two, right, is where God first mentions rest.
SPEAKER 04 :
Genesis two, two. Yes. On the seventh day, God ended his work, which he had made. And he rested on the seventh day, which from all the work which he had made. And he blessed the seventh day and he sanctified it because in it he had rested from all his work, which God created himself. He sanctified it. And then later in Exodus, he insisted that Israel remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. So it’s something that God instituted for himself and then insisted that we remember. So he gave us a pattern.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, yeah. And you know what’s so interesting about that is, so God chooses to rest on the seventh day. But we know from Isaiah 40 that God does not grow weary or tired. The creator of the world does not grow weary or tired. And so we have to ask, why did God rest? And I think it was for two main reasons. And you mentioned one, to set a pattern. And also, I believe he chose to rest to stop and delight. The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which can mean to both stop and delight. So imagine God creating everything from nothing, ex nihilo, everything from nothing. I think after that, he simply wanted to enjoy everything that he had just made, taking in the songs of the birds and the flowers, aromas, and just enjoying it. And so what an example for us, because we are so prone to just rush one thing to the next and hurry and hustle, but God wants us to stop and delight. And then think about that pattern that you mentioned, because Adam, the first human, was created on the sixth day. So Adam’s first full day of life was the Sabbath. Adam started with Sabbath. We see that God works and then rests, while we were always meant to begin with rest, to start from rest, not rest. get everything done so maybe we can rest on the weekend or on vacation or in retirement. No, God wants us to start from His rest and then go and do our fruitful work.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, wow. I hadn’t ever thought of that, but… The very first full day that Adam spent with God in the garden was the day of just resting and enjoying and relaxing. And people think that the Old Testament God was such a hard-nosed God, but he started the whole thing out with a day of rest and relaxation, R&R from the very beginning. Wow, that is so cool.
SPEAKER 03 :
Rest and delight. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. So as a master naturalist, I think I said that right, right? Master naturalist. All right. So obviously with that discipline and then the title of your book, can you share, I guess I’m curious to get to the first example that you can share from the natural world that deeply reflects this biblical principle of rest.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, I don’t want to put you on the spot, Erin, but since fairy shrimp was in the intro, I pretty much need to know about what’s going on with that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, the fairy shrimp are fascinating, starting just with their name. Like, how fun that there’s a creature called the fairy shrimp. My family and I, we discovered these little creatures a couple of summers ago here in Colorado. And we were up in Estes Park, Colorado, and we’re hiking and we clambered up on top of these massive boulders. And it was, I believe, late July. And we’re just hiking around. And then my kids start calling to me. They’re like, Mom, come here. Come see this. Come see this. And you know, when a child says that to you. that’s an invitation into their world, into their wonder, like faith like a child. They still have this fresh God-given curiosity. And so I go over to see what they have found, and they are laying down on the boulder. So I just get right next to them, lay down on my belly, And there’s this depression in the boulder that is full of water. It was a seasonal vernal pool, a seasonal pond. And as we’re watching it, there’s all kinds of little creatures just wriggling and swimming around. We counted at least five different kinds of creatures in this little puddle in the boulder. And later we were researching them and there was one of them that it looked like this translucent creature. Some of them had heads that kind of looked like elephant trunks. And then some of them had translucent egg sacs where we could see these tiny little orange eggs on them. And we found out that these were fairy shrimp, a freshwater shrimp, very close to the brine shrimp, very similar. And the thing about fairy shrimp is that they only live in these seasonal vernal ponds. And of course they’re seasonal. So when the water dries up, how do these things live? How do they even get there? Well, their eggs that they lay are extremely resilient. They can survive in drought. They can survive in freezing temperatures. They can survive being ingested by like a bird that is drinking from that vernal pool and later deposits it elsewhere. That’s actually how they can spread. But scientists believe that these eggs, they can survive dormant for 10 years, some say hundreds of years. And then when the conditions are right again, when that pool fills up, when the temperatures are right, they hatch. And so a big theme of the book, it’s a six-week study, and one of the weeks we talk about waiting. And how these seasons of waiting in our lives that often feel, you know, we’re uncomfortable with them. They feel restless. No, seasons of waiting are an invitation from God to rest and to wait on what he is doing. Like the fairy shrimp, those eggs, they can’t control the situation, the conditions around them. And often we can’t either. We have to wait on God to arrange those conditions and trust that he has good plans and that he is a God who brings life.
SPEAKER 03 :
What a way to come across the fairy shrimp. I never heard of it. I mean, I’m familiar with the mantis shrimp, the one that, you know, the thumb splitter in the aquarium that catapults a weapon like at the speed of a .22 bullet. But the fairy shrimp, wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Well, as soon as you started telling me you were hiking up in the mountains, I’m like, okay, so how is she going to get to the ocean to the shrimp from the mountains? Wow, that is amazing. That is really, really amazing. And more evidence of the precision and design and the planning that God put behind the creation. It’s just fascinating. Amazing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Yes, it is.
SPEAKER 03 :
Glorious. So what does science actually say about the necessity for rest? Does your book get into that topic at all or?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I mean, most of the book is looking at these designs in nature, like the fairy shrimp and bees and hummingbirds and trees and how rest is absolutely vital for life. But one thing I’ve really enjoyed studying about this, I’ve had the opportunity to actually go into corporate and business realms and speak on Sabbath. That’s been fascinating that I just spoke to a group of 60 realtors, not even a faith-based group. And they see that rest can actually benefit their team, their employees. And a big reason for that and what I share is that science points to how rest truly enables our brains to operate well. All of the executive functioning, problem solving, connecting ideas, turning problems. new knowledge into long-term memories. And so, of course, that has major benefits for leadership and in every area of our lives. But it points back to God designed our brains to operate through rest. And so my husband and I, we homeschool our kids. And one thing, we have just created this very restful atmosphere in our home, restful rhythms that between lessons, the kids are going outside, they’re resting. Because that allows our brains, God designed our brains to be able to soak in that information and actually use it better. As opposed to if we were just rushing from one lesson to the next or one meeting to the next or one conversation to the next. When we insert these intentional pauses, I call them Selah pauses in the book, our brains are actually operating as God designed them to.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, wow, Aaron. So I have to stop you right now because you just said something that I want to encourage parents out there. You might think or you’ve heard maybe that homeschooling is difficult or maybe you think you can’t do it. Maybe you’re not equipped to do it. Maybe it’s too difficult. What Aaron just described is that’s been our life for 25 years. Homeschooling allows you to create your own schedule and You get a lot more rest than you get dropping the kids off at 7.30 in the morning in the line of cars in front of the school. If you’re intimidated by it, listen to what Aaron just said. And by the way, stop by Aaron’s booth at the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference. It’s coming up June 12th through the 14th at the Marriott Denver Tech Center in beautiful, sunny Denver, Colorado. June 12th through the 14th, Erin will have a booth at the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference. Real Science Radio will have a booth. Feel free to come by. If you’re witty and intelligent, you might end up on the air. We’ll be doing interviews. Erin will have… What are you having in your booth, Erin? What did you say earlier?
SPEAKER 01 :
So we set up a full… It’s based off of the Cabinets of Curiosity website. from long ago. It’s a full nature museum booth where we bring in antlers and fossils and all sorts of fun things, including three live axolotls we’ll have this year.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, you’ve got a coupon code too, right? So those who are listening on radio or if you’re watching on YouTube and you’re in the Denver area, you’ve got a coupon code that, what, helps you during the registration process?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, so you can save $30 on registration using the coupon code NATTHEO25!
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, and I want to get to Nat Thiel, but before we do, because that’s a really cool thing, too, that you’ve got going. But, you know, this kind of hit home with me because, you know, as an engineer, there’s been times, and I’d say I don’t know how often, but maybe every couple months where you’re working on such a hard problem. And you end up solving it in your sleep. And it could be a complex problem. And my son, who’s now a firmware engineer for Micron Corporation, it’s the same with him. He’s mentioned to me how, man, I was just really struggling with this problem. And I solved it in my sleep. I’m like, hey, Ryan, isn’t that so cool? But I never put it together that God actually designed that. I mean, I just really didn’t think about it. And now you mentioning it today on the show, that is so cool.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s such a powerful point. I love that you brought that up because that’s what we’ve seen. My family has been celebrating Sabbath for over three years now. And then we also have very restful rhythms in our days. And what we have found is that on Sabbath, we’re not working in the normal sense, but we solve so many problems that come Monday when we get back to work, like we are ready. We’re solving problems. We’re more creative. We’re more effective and productive throughout the week. All because we are allowing our minds, our bodies, our souls to rest.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow. Yes. So anyway, in my work, I work with a lot of unbelievers. And a lot of the younger folks who run some of the companies that I work with, they’ve spent much of their young lives working seven days a week. And they take a certain amount of pride in that. And I’ve told them from early on, I said, you know, God says you should take at least one day off a week. You should listen to God. And a lot of my younger co-workers, as they’ve gone out of their late 20s through their 30s, now into their 40s, now their life has kind of hit them or they’ve kind of hit life like a wall. And they realize I do need to take at least one day off a week. And we know that. Had God not given us that pattern, that there are tyrants in the world who would have us enslaved and working seven days a week. And that’s one of the reasons I believe God gave that pattern. And the scripture indicates that God gave that pattern to restrain the tyranny of self-indulgence among tyrants.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, okay. So I wanted to get to Nat Theo. Yes. You’ve got a podcast and this is a podcast for children. And I hear it’s doing pretty well. Can you tell us what started Nat Theo and just share a little bit more information about it?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, so we launched Nat Theo, which is Nature Lessons Rooted in the Bible, a podcast for kids and families. We launched it when my second book, Rooted in Wonder, released. And I actually didn’t plan on podcasting. My husband had been trying to talk me into podcasting for years. He’s an avid podcast listener. And then when this book launched, I just had this little idea of what Jesus’s favorite bird might have been. And so I wrote this little script and figured out how to record it and get online. And I thought, okay, maybe this will be a hobby that I put a little lesson out there once in a while. And very quickly, God was like, this is not a hobby. This is what I created you for. And it was so cool to see just so encouraging how families were resonating as we went, like we quickly went weekly with episodes because homeschool families started using it as their science curriculum, never anticipated that. So we actually launched a full curriculum, an optional curriculum to go with it. And just to see the response that families are hungry for exactly what you guys are doing on Real Science Radio, hungry for real science rooted in biblical truth, always bringing it back. So what we do is we take nature study and return it to its proper place as theology, teaching real science and nature lessons that always drive home biblical truth. So when our kids go outside and they see caterpillars or birds or or any kind of creature or plant, they are reminded of God’s truth and the scriptures.
SPEAKER 04 :
I love it. I was just listening to your podcast on hummingbirds. Highly recommend it. Very fascinating. I’ve always thought hummingbirds were really cool, you know, because they come by our back window and some of them have a red head and some have a green head. And but little did I know the sophistication and the just amazing design. And I never noticed they rest. But anyway, you do a great job describing how that all works.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, now I’m curious about two things. How that hummingbird rests. I mean, I just see those things zipping around all the time. And what you thought was God’s favorite bird.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good. I love talking about birds. Let’s do it. Let’s start with the hummingbird. The hummingbird is actually what I opened the new book, The Nature of Rest, with. Because the late theologian Oswald Chambers, he talked about, he was quoting Jesus’ words in Matthew 11, “‘Come unto me, all who are tired and weary, and I will give you rest.'” Oswald Chambers wrote that rest is the perfection of motion, the perfection of motion. Very different idea of rest. We often think about rest as stopping, but he had this idea of it’s actually the perfection of motion. I believe we see that in hummingbirds because, yes, you think about a hummingbird, and they will visit 1,000 to 2,000 flowers every day. They have to eat every 10 to 15 minutes. They’re constantly on the go. Their little wings, they can flap about 70 times every second. And to fuel that, their little hearts, which are tiny, although compared to body size, they’re the largest heart in the animal kingdom. But those tiny little hearts have to beat about 1200 times a minute. So this picture of constant motion and activity. But what sustains them is a deep rest, a strategy God designed them with called torpor. And torpor is kind of like a mini hibernation where the bird will actually lower its body temperature by about 50 degrees and go into this deeply unresponsive state. Some people have found hummingbirds in torpor and thought that they were dead because they’re so deep at rest. And if they’re clinging to a feeder or a branch, sometimes they’ll actually flip over and be hanging from that feeder or branch upside down, still resting, unaware that they’re hanging upside down. But it’s a beautiful picture of, you know, they go about their God-given fruitful work to help the plants repopulate through pollination, all of this designed by God. And he designed them to do that work by regular, rhythmic, intentional rest. And what a picture for us, that God designed us for fruitful work and activity, but all supported through rhythms of rest.
SPEAKER 03 :
So is that God’s favorite bird then?
SPEAKER 01 :
No. Well, we’re going to have to ask him one day. But what I talked about in that first episode when I had no idea what I was doing with podcasting, but I was studying. Okay. I don’t want to mention the bird yet. So.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s perfect.
SPEAKER 01 :
There’s a bird.
SPEAKER 03 :
Teeth for reading, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. Right. There is a bird that is extremely common. It is possibly the most common bird in the world. Little brown bird. It is a cosmopolitan species. Lives on every continent except Antarctica. It was probably in your yard this morning. And it follows civilization. You’re probably not going to find it in the wilderness. Any guesses?
SPEAKER 04 :
I have a guess. It’s too obvious. Crows are black. No. Crows are black. You had it, Fred.
SPEAKER 03 :
Sparrow? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
It is a sparrow, specifically a house sparrow.
SPEAKER 03 :
I didn’t hear you say yes, so I’m like, okay, I had to keep guessing.
SPEAKER 01 :
It is the house sparrow, which is actually an invasive species here, but they are all over. And my favorite fact about them is that the oldest fossil of one ever discovered was in a cave outside of Bethlehem. And so it’s very possible that Jesus grew up to the songs of these sparrows that my kids and I hear every day. Like they’re out in my yard right now. And it’s fascinating because of course we know from the gospels, Jesus used birds in his teaching, in one verse specifically sparrows. But when he’s talking about birds and look how carefully the father cares for the birds, how much more does he care for you? But then I learned what it takes to actually care for a house sparrow. House sparrow chicks, they require 3,000 to 4,000 insects from the time they hatch to the time they fledge. Their parents have to visit. They have to go out and find insects and visit the nest about 200 times every day. And my family and I watch this. We have in our yard this big birdhouse. We call it the sparrow condominium because there’s like 12 different nests in it. And we watch as the parents take turns coming and going from the nest all day, every day, caring for those chicks. And even after they fledged, the parents spend a full five weeks with them. teaching them to hunt, teaching them to fly. And so think about that, connecting it to this scripture that God so carefully cares for the birds. Back at creation, he was planning the plants, the insects, the entire ecosystems to make sure that those little sparrow chicks have what they need. How much more does he care for us? How much more was he planning in advance before creation to make sure we have everything we need?
SPEAKER 03 :
This show is going to make my wife really sad because, you know, we had sparrows form a nest on our deck and we thought they were done, you know, but apparently they could have another batch and she thought they were gone and she hit the nest out and there were chicks in it. Oh, it’s a sad one. I probably won’t tell her to watch this show. Yeah. Well, that reminds me too, you’re talking about the hummingbird. So quite a few shows back, we do this segment called the interesting fact of the week. And one of the questions I asked had to do with the hummingbird. I don’t remember exactly what the question was. It might’ve had to do with the fact it’s like a helicopter or something. Well, normally I like to push this little buzzer and buzz my co-host Doug. Cause you know, when he gets it wrong, but He got that one right, but he was cheating, wasn’t he? Weren’t you, Doug? You were cheating. That’s right. I had the bird whisperer in my ear. That’s right. That’s Nicole, who I think is sitting there with you off camera probably. Much of our audience knows Nicole from some of the shorts she’s done for us. But she’s a bird whisperer. She’s a bird whisperer.
SPEAKER 04 :
She actually had a sparrow. You have to remind me the name of the sparrow that you sprout. Anyway, she had a sparrow that I think the sparrow was either sick or injured. Oh, the baby fell out of the nest, and Nicole raised the sparrow for some number of weeks, and the sparrow would fly from her hand out the back door, hang out in the yard, fly back to her hand to get fed. It was really cool. That’s how she became the bird whisperer. Are sparrows your favorite?
SPEAKER 03 :
What if it’s the thing finally just never come back?
SPEAKER 04 :
One day she let it go, and it never came back.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, just like Noah. That’s like Noah with an F.
SPEAKER 04 :
That was his hide. And we were out on the high plains of the eastern edge of the Denver metro area out in Bennett. And our property was like, it was rather sparse, but we did have a number of trees. And it seems like from that point forward, the sparrow population stored. And we always had lots of sparrows out there on the high plains. And now you just, you mentioned, Aaron, that we can see in God’s careful care for the animals and creation and nature, how he prepared for us even before the creation. And I think, you know, Genesis starts with in the beginning, God created. And so it’s, it’s difficult for us to think about, but God obviously did a lot of serious planning before he even started the creation. And it’s fascinating to be able to observe it now. And, uh, going through birds, axolotls. Is that how you pronounce it? Axolotls? And so give us another example of rest, design, beauty in God’s creation, because it’s just enjoyable to hear you go through it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s talk about bees because we often think about, just like the hummingbird, we think about bees as busy bees. They have so much work to do. Like when you really start digging into the different jobs that bees have, even as they get older, they change jobs. All this design, it’s phenomenal. And the forager bees who are in charge of going out and finding nectar and pollen for the hive, when they come back to the hive, they have to somehow communicate to the other bees where the source of pollen and nectar is that they have found. And they do this through a very intricate dance called the waggle dance. Like, isn’t that just a crazy name? The waggle dance. And it is this very detailed figure eight flight pattern. And scientists believe that it communicates to the other bees three things about where the nectar and pollen is. First, what direction it’s in. Second, how far away it is. And third, it even speaks to the quality of the nectar or pollen or this flower patch that the bee has found. And so you think that has to be a really, really detailed dance to communicate all those things. But the bees, they cannot perform this waggle dance accurately if they are tired. So even a busy bee depends on rest to be able to communicate and operate within its team, within its hive.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow, that’s cool. I mean, I think we’ve talked about the waggle dance before on the show, but we never had the tie-in with rest, that they have to have rest before, you know, for this thing to whole work. That has to be integrated into the whole process.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and I was not familiar with the almost military precision, the direction, the distance, everything.
SPEAKER 02 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That’s Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 05 :
Intelligent Design and DNA That’s what I’m talking about.
What if rest isn’t laziness, but intelligent design?
On this episode of Real Science Radio, Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney welcome Erin Lynham, certified master naturalist and Bible teacher, to explore how the Sabbath isn’t just biblical—it’s biological. Erin shares stunning examples from nature—including fairy shrimp, bees, and hummingbirds—that show how rest is woven into creation at every level. From Genesis to neuroscience, discover how rest isn’t weakness but wisdom by design.
Erin also discusses her children’s podcast Nat Theo, why sparrows might be God’s favorite bird, and how her family’s rhythms of rest have transformed their lives.
Plus, get details
