Come to Me, all you who are weary and
burdened and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from
Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for
your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. Matthew
11:28-30 (NIV)
Yesterday evening I sat at the kitchen table with my oldest
granddaughter helping her with her homework. As she sat working on her
math, I took her file folder that is categorized by subject and started
pulling out papers. Holding up each one, I asked if she needed them any
longer. As she shook her head or nodded, I either replaced the papers
or put them in a pile to be recycled.
When I was finished, we continued with the rest of her work. When
we were ready to go to the next subject, she picked up the folder,
placed her math inside, smiled and tossed the folder in the air. She
said, "Wow! This thing is much lighter now that I got rid of all the
junk I didn't need!"
This morning I did my Bible study and prayer time. When I
finished praying an overwhelming tiredness enveloped me, so I lay down
on the couch and fell asleep. As I was waking, I remembered the above
incident as these words floated through my mind:
"The average Christian carries around a lot of junk they don't need and so feels weighed down under the pressure of it."
Anger,
bitterness, need to be successful in the world's eye, rejection, hurts
from the past, popularity, fear, love of money and/or possessions and on
and on the list goes. We then have placed on top of all this the need
for things to happen instantaneously. We live in such a fast paced
world that we are constantly seeking ways to make it move faster. The
urgency is so great that s\the public school system has decided
handwriting is an unnecessary subject. It needs to be legible, but
cursive doesn't even need to be taught as computers run the day.
Writing letters takes too much time anyway and email makes it where we
can send one message to hundreds in the push of a computer key. Dialing
a phone takes too long, so we have one button dialing. All of this has
simply added to our burdens, because we have stopped knowing how to be
patient. Instead we have become driven to go faster and faster. This
way we can do more in each day, which is another burden when we cannot
accomplish all we feel we should be able to within twenty four hours.
Yesterday I was upset with myself because I had forgotten to practice my
music for Sunday. I admit this only lasted a moment, but the
consideration that it would be much easier to drop out of our church
music program did go fleetingly through my mind. Then I looked at what I
had accomplished. I spent the day with our youngest grandson
and made him smile and laugh throughout the day. We had learned four
new poems together, done some math, read together (I read to him, then
he to me), went to the library and imagined we were planting corn on the
cob. When it was grown, which took an amazing thirty seconds at most,
we cooked, buttered and ate it. After nine hours of watching him laugh,
learn and grow, I worked with my granddaughter for two and half hours
on her homework. In between I had made meals, typed lesson plans, done
some cleaning and eventually made dinner. I talked to my oldest son on
the phone, visited with my daughter, youngest son and grandchildren as
they were dropping off and picking up, made a snack for my husband and
son-in-law to hold them over until dinner and went to Kohls to pay our
bill off. I had accomplished much!
I shared all that to say, we need to stop looking at what we didn't get done and look at what we
did.
Constantly berating ourselves for not doing all that we feel is
expected of us does nothing but add another burden - the burden of
defeat. The amplified Bible, which expounds on each verse from the
original Greek, says this:
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will [a]ease and relieve and [b]refresh [c]your souls.]
29 Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest ([a]relief and ease and refreshment and [b]recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.
30 For My yoke is wholesome (useful, [c]good—not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.
Footnotes:
- Matthew 11:29 Alexander Souter, Pocket Lexicon.
- Matthew 11:29 Joseph Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon.
- Matthew 11:30 James Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary.
We no longer seem to know how to relax and be refreshed. When
we try, we feel guilty. We have increased our personal burdens while
all along Jesus has been telling us that He wants to ease them.
Cleaning house by yourself will eventually get the job done, but if
someone is willing to help. it gets done twice or three times as fast;
three times if housework is difficult for you but found easy by your
helper. I have helped many a child clean their bedroom. They are always
amazed at how fast it gets done, because when they try to do it alone,
they become overwhelmed. Jesus finds nothing too difficult to handle.
He knows and
is the answer to all things. If we go to Him
and seek His will, listen to and obey His voice, rejecting fear of
others opinions of us, even our own, and focusing on His opinion
instead, we will find rest in even the most mundane and/or most
difficult of tasks as He work alongside us, carrying the majority of the
load on His own shoulders.
Father, teach us to rest in You.
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