Rest

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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." --Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30)

We live in a world full of striving, achieving, performing, all the while wondering if we have been good enough or smart enough. We live on the edge, afraid a mistake will be too costly to recover from. A lifetime of this is exhausting and it leaves us fragile, fractured and angry.

Learning from Jesus brings rest. The path of a disciple is fundamentally about rest because grace brings rest. We receive grace (unmerited favor) from Jesus through the cross. The cross destroys all our pretense about striving, achieving, and performing for God so that we can simply just be with God. The One who could judge us in Christ doesn't judge us and therefore we have freedom and rest. We are now freed to simply be with God.

The path of a disciple is learning to rest in God and then work from that rest. This perhaps is the heart of the Sabbath, resting. We could think about our spiritual disciplines as expressions of Sabbath. Bible study isn't something we do to prove to God or other Christians that we are spiritual, it is a time to simply be with God.

Prayer becomes giving our attention and cares to God and experiencing God's attention in our lives. Fellowship is about being with others who are experiencing the renewal of life through the easy yoke of Christ.

This is a good way to live. This way brings profound contentment, joy and peace. As we discover rest in Christ we finally experience love at the deeper levels of our being and love is what allows us to rest. We find that all is held in love and is destined for love. For within the kingdom all is well and we can trust the King with ourselves and his path is life.