Prepare to Listen. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
Prayerfully Read Matthew 11:28-30 28Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ Prayerfully Wonder To you who are weary, carrying heavy burdens Jesus says, “Come to me.” We live in a culture of insatiable requirements laid upon us, rampant greed for more and more stuff, the need for control, etc. We worry we’re not good enough or doing enough and we’re too afraid to rest. We are weary and heavy burdened. “Come to me,” invites Jesus. Take time out from the rat race of contemporary culture, and rest. Cease striving to get more, be more, do more, and rest. Since rest is the image of our Creator who “rested the seventh day” and since we’re commanded to rest every seven days, “Remember the sabbath and keep it holy,”[1] come, says Jesus and find rest. To experience the rest he promised for our souls, make it a practice to treat one day a week as holy, a Sabbath to God. Cease from work, anxiety, greed, the pursuit of approval from others, from all that drains your soul and leaves you empty. Be like our Sabbath-keeping God who is, as Brueggemann notes, a God of restfulness and not restlessness. When we take a sabbath rest we are, in concrete and visible ways “opting for and aligning with the God of rest.”[2] Come, invites Jesus, “and you will find rest for your souls.” It takes courage and trust to accept his come. Prayerfully Reflect Find rest by stopping work, be that the work to excel, the work of employment, the work of not being good enough. Stop for just one day a week and trust Jesus’ promise of rest for your soul. Prayerfully Respond Lord Jesus, you invite me ever so gently to Come, and find rest for my soul. Yet I so often resist, fearing what I might lose if I do. Help me practice rest and thus live in the image of my Creator, a God of restfulness. Amen. Live obediently. Come! Trust Jesus and rest. [1] Exodus 20:8-11; see also Genesis 2:2. [2] Brueggemann, W. Sabbath as Resistance. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017, p. 10.
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