DO YOU feel well rested, restored? Or are you weary from it all?
Today, we are slaves to all kinds of unrest–in counties, communities, and in our minds. We scurry around trying to keep up with it all, and even after we sleep we’re tired. Frustration with the world leaves us exhausted.
We drag a heavy burden, a loaded history behind us. How many of us just feel so tired these days? It’s as if the soul of the world is worn out.
You might wake up in the morning thinking, “I just can’t today.”
I get tired when I rest in my efforts alone or in my expectations of others. It’s exhausting trying to figure it all out on my own. And when someone lets me down or when I fail, then my place of rest vanishes.
But why should I expect anyone to give me the rest my soul requires? I get weary when I rest in the temporal, instead of the eternal.
But if you fall to your knees, if you close your eyes, if you seek silence, what then? What happens if you rest in the presence of God? What happens if you ask him to strip it all away?
He lifts the burden of expectation off your shoulders.
Yes, faith and life demand much from you. But not now. Not here. Not in the bosom of God.
Here you can let it all out–from the deepest despair of your hurt to the stain of past wretchedness.
The cry of a thousand years builds up inside you.
Just let it out. Set it free.
There is no ‘doing’ at this moment. Your Creator does all the caring for you.
He listens. He waits. And all the while he restores you.
This is the soulful rest we all need.
You can go for years, decades even, running away from it. But when the moment of grace arrives, you collapse into his arms knowing you’ve come home.
And just for a moment, everything else melts away. The worries, the sickness, the unpaid bills, the craziness of your family, your fears and insecurity, our world in flames. It all goes quiet, at least for a moment, for now.
And the Lord embraces you. It’s pure tenderness, all for you with nothing held back.
A tenacious mercy cries out to say, “I will do anything for you to show you I love you. I will go to the cross, die for you, rise for you… all for you. Be not afraid to be loved.”
And there, child of God, you find the sweetest rest, a spacious place.
Then you wake up the next morning to say,
“Yes Lord. This day is mine, a sacred gift to me.
I will live it to the fullest as I am well rested.
I am alive and ready. I am free.”
. . . . . . .
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul…
Psalm 23:1-3a
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