The rest that I never felt... until now.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest” (Matthew 11:28):
This verse that I’ve known for quite some time now seemed so
distant from me during the past weeks. If you are even in this
world slightly, I’m sure the wickedness is overwhelming.
Because of this, my mind is constantly racing with questions:
- When can we rest if the wicked never will?
And
- when can we rest when hard work doesn’t pay for much of anything anymore?
In these ways, rest seemed unattainable to me. It is my experience and acquired knowledge about this world that we must work and spend money to survive. If you noticed, there was no “rest” in this statement of my truth.
My point here is that it’s hard to find rest and even harder to find the time to rest. I always knew of God's promise that He would give us rest, but I have never tapped into how to attain it. My mind, body (especially my body), and spirit wanted to know, so I asked God
to show me what "rest" really meant and how it would feel.
So, God, being clever as He is, made it a point to answer my question
when I felt tired (because how else could I understand rest except when
I was exhausted, right?).
When I felt worn down, He would ask me if He showed me where to go, or did I make my own way through the trenches?
He also showed me that I felt different kinds of exhaustion:
every day
exhaustion from work and straight-up energy drains, which were people and situations that decreased
my life force. It was then that I had the "ah ha!" moment. I realized that I would become tired when I pushed for my own
will to be done.
But this mode of thinking stems from societal expectations. Every day we rush to get to work; we rush to after-school activities, and we rush to get home and start the process of rushing all over again. We push and push
without taking the time to let God work, even though His plan would bring us a better result. Now, I was
going to end the previous sentence with “peace” or “rest," but that wouldn’t
exactly spell out what rest feels
like to me. And after all, that is the reason for the blog post.
When I say rest, I
don’t mean the time to take a nap. I don’t mean to be able to sleep in until noon, and I don't mean getting 12 hours of sleep at night. When I say God will give us rest, I mean He will gift us with simplicity.
He will enable us to go through life with ease if we simply choose to
think with our heart-- to keep it simple.
With this simplicity, listening can become easy. Because Jesus
gave us His Holy Spirit, we can let go and simply rest. The transition into this
mindset does take some time though, especially because we are taught that we have all the
control, and therefore, must be in control of all situations.
But y'all, God is in control.
He has always been and will always be in control.
The only thing that we have control over is our
choices. If we choose to keep it simple—to think with our hearts—we will
feel what the right choice is. We will rely on the Holy Spirit’s tug at our hearts and its compassion over our minds. With that, we
will have no problem committing to the right choices. In simplicity, we will personally experience the rest that God promised us and that we have always heard about.
Until next time.
BAA
