Friday, July 26, 2024

Absolute Rest for Your Soul

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 


These words follow a prayer in which Jesus praises His Father for revealing the secret things of God, not to the wise or accomplished, but as to children, meek and unspoiled. This wasn’t meant to exclude anyone. Assuring the hope of the Gospel for everyone, Jesus begins His invitation with the most inclusive words: “Come to me, all…”

The great proclamation of rest and release is one that most believers have memorized and clung to with deep hope. It is the exhale, the sigh of relief, the respite from strife. So easily applied to our own daily struggles, the words give us permission to take a timeout. No matter the nature of it, work is hard. It weighs us down, whether physically or mentally. We all need a minute or two to rest our weary bones, to cease from the struggle. We can’t hold up under the pressure of what we’ve brought on ourselves, and we need God to give us a break.

Wait. Is that what Jesus said? Maybe, right now, that’s what you need to hear, and that’s okay. But it’s much, much more. It’s so grand and glorious that we have to step back and view it from a broader plain. Its promise is rich and eternal, and we can’t process it as simply a way to get through our current insufferable predicament. Its message carries us beyond the physical and mental, to the spiritual. We must, to find absolute rest, believe the instruction completely and apply it comprehensively. 

The first people to hear the bidding to come and rest were steeped in the tradition of God’s covenant with Israel. Imagine their burden. All they knew was to follow the law. All of it. Every degree that to us seems to demand the impossible. It was, for the children of Israel, a heavy burden, too great to bear. But then this Teacher, or Prophet, or Son of the Living God— if He was to be believed—came with something new. Something unheard of. In essence, Jesus told His listeners to stop struggling. No need to keep trying to work it out. He was about to take care of it once and for all.

Did those who heard this news understand the fullness of the repose that was about to be given to them? It was a gift, not to be earned, requiring nothing except to come and rest.

Now, perhaps we have forgotten what those souls of Israel once knew. We can’t truly grasp what it was like to live under the burden of the law. But we do know that the law points us to Christ. We know the cross and the empty tomb. We know redemption. We have a Savior. And we can rest in Him.

Can we ask God for rest from what this world bombards us with day to day? Of course. But it’s not everything. In comparison, it’s really not anything, for this world will soon pass away. It is the burden of sin that’s too heavy, the yoke of the law that’s impossible for us to bear on our own. But the way of Jesus is light. His yoke on us is that we simply believe. His heart toward us is gentle. He rescued us by becoming a humble servant. That’s where we find rest for our souls, our eternally free, unchained souls. If we don’t have to work for it, what reason could there be not to rest in it? The yoke and the burden are no longer ours. They are His. Praise God and breathe that long awaited sigh of relief.


 

Friday, July 5, 2024

Solomon, Shakespeare, and a Roman

That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun Ecclesiastes 1:9

        

O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun, 
Show me your image in some antique book, 
Since mind at first in character was done! 

(From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59)

 

King Solomon proclaimed there is nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare agreed. If these two great men saw the modern world, they might recant. But neither meant to say the world was not locked in forward motion, ever changing, progressing. There is no other way to go. Yet while the human race invents and conquers, the human soul lurches forward and stumbles back, over and over. We are enlightened. We are ignorant. We accept. We deny. We love. We hate. We submit. We will not be refused. We find our center, our purpose. We do not know who we are.

Legal ramifications and societal implications are as old as time. It’s all been brought up before by liberals and conservatives. By the religious and anti-religious. The family units clinging to tradition, and the alternately inclined demanding their rights. Here’s a short excerpt from a piece written by Roman satirist Juvenal sometime around AD 90:

"I must go down-town tomorrow 
First thing: a special engagement." "What's happening?" "Need you ask?" 
I'm going to a wedding. Old So-and-so's got his boyfriend 
To the altar at last...." 

Juvenal was no loud-mouthed Christian standing up for the good folks in the Bible belt. He was just a smart-mouthed, staunch Roman who saw his government letting go of its hold on the fundamentals. And he wrote about it with sarcasm and disrespect.


The new world is as old as the human heart. We break no new ground. The voice of disapproval has spoken before. Our government might lose its mooring, and perhaps, it will crumble and become a page in history. There is nothing new under the sun.


But…the sun will not burn forever. And the heart will not falter in this present darkness for all eternity.

They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever  Revelation 22:4,5