“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

Who is not weary? Who is not burdened? This is an invitation to everyone…but…not everyone knows they are burdened, not everyone knows they are weary and not everyone cares to do anything about it. For this invitation to be accepted one needs self-awareness and a willingness to trust.

What a brilliant offer…he does not offer riches, he does not offer retribution, vengeance, or even justice in this instance. He offers rest. Simple rest. What does this kind of rest even look like? Who knows, but the offer is compelling because it is not an offer that is typically made.

Sure we find opportunities for rest. We go on vacations to sunny places (some of us) and we take time off of work but we don’t really get rest do we? Not the kind we want. If we did we wouldn’t keep going back to the vacation well would we? No, what we really want is a permanent rest…the kind that transforms us into who we always wanted to be but couldn’t because of the wearying weight (wait?) of the world.

There are times when something inside of me wants to bear the burdens of every person I ever meet. This is the part of me that weeps at the unreal level of pain that most of us bear in silence and alone. How it does not kill us is beyond me (sometimes it does). But there is this other part of me that I fear is stronger – it is the part of me that wants to add to the burdens of others. To increase their pain and laugh and feel not so alone in my own because others now hurt too. This part is a monster. It keeps the other part of me (that part that seeks to be a person of integrity) at bay and traps me in the limbo of inaction and apathy, a lukewarm swamp of paralyzed apartness.

Into the midst of all of this Christ speaks to me sometimes like a sword cutting through the Gordian knot of pain and potential that has coalesced within and simply says “come to me and I will give you rest…take my yoke and learn from me.”

Beneath it all is the great unspoken word ABIDE…abide in Christ. I hear it and see it clear as as day but it requires a letting go that I sometimes don’t feel capable of. I have a death grip on the things that weary me. I have a death grip on the world and so the critical step after hearing his voice if one wishes to abide in Christ must be letting go.

How does one let go of all that one feels is keeping one afloat in the great and stormy world? It might involve becoming aware that the things that one feels are life preservers in the waves are really anchors seeking to drown us. Still it is a scary thing to let go and cast ourselves to the deep blue on a promise of being lifted up.

This is the constant imagery the Christ offers to us – the images of letting go, of casting ourselves on the waters, of dying to ourselves…that which we love the most if we are honest – ourselves.

Would we die to ourselves for the promise of rest? Well if we look around we can see that even this promise does not seem to be enough. If I look inside I see only fragments of death (or life) and not the whole thing.

The promise of rest however is not a promise that says let go of everything and receive nothing in return however. Christ promises a new yoke; A lighter yoke and the instruction on how to bear it. 

I’m not sure I like the image of a yoke but it is apt if we come to realize that everything we grasp in order to survive this life (wealth, stuff, big homes, nice cars, women, porn, drugs, fantasy, power, and the idols of work and debt that we use to make it all happen) – these things are simply yokes, big heavy weights around our necks designed to plow fields of contentment but really only end of plowing the dark pits of our own graves in the end.

I should gladly be willing to shed all of these yokes for a lighter one with the guidance to wear it. I should leap at the chance if not for the crush of the others I have on me now.

It is at this point when we wish to cry out in great frustration as we are drowning in our own desires that this promise is impossible for we are bound to death in our bones. We are dying in the sea and the promised ship is metres away but we cannot reach it without breaking the chains that bind us and the harsh reality is that we cannot. We keep hearing that all we have to do is die to ourselves to save ourselves and in response we want to scream that if this is the case “WHO THEN CAN BE SAVED?!?!?!”

This then is the right question. This is the place of frustrated realization that we cannot do anything to save ourselves from the weight we have accumulated. We cannot even respond. We can only cry out in shattered awareness that we are doomed and with the necessary knowledge of certain peril Christ reaches in with the answer:

“With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26

With this, I walk like Marley in chains of my own making and stumble along knowing that Christ will unbind me. That only Christ can unbind me. That I must abide in his presence and trust that he will not let me drown but as he rises so will I and so will you.