Matthew 11:28-30
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

How often do we just get tired?  Not just physically tired, but weighed down by the weighty things of this life?  There are all kinds of things that we labor under, all kinds of things that we heave onto our shoulders and try to carry around, all the while feeling like we can barely stand up under it all.  Sometimes it can feel like if just one more thing was added on top, we’d collapse.  Sometimes we’re weary not just in our bones, but all the way down to our souls.

And while our muscles are straining under the burden of it all, a voice calls out to us.  As we struggle forward, trying to carry it by ourselves, Jesus offers us this invitation.  There is a rest in Jesus that is enough to go down deep into our souls.  There is a strength in Him that is enough to ease the heaviest things we carry with us.

If we want real rest, all we have to do is go to Jesus and let go of our burdens at His feet.  We stop trying to carry everything on our own.  We stop striving against things which we cannot overcome.  We stop trying to be so valiantly self-sufficient when we were made to need God.  So we enter into this partnership, in a sense, yoked with Jesus, and the load becomes more manageable because He is with us in it.  And as we go beside Him day by day, we learn to be like Him, and He is meek, submissive to the burden placed upon Him, humble and surrendered to His Father’s will, and that is the place we find our rest.

We can be free from all those things that would weigh us down—sin, worry, fear, the struggles of this life, and thinking we have to be able to do everything on our own.  God wants us to grow to be more like His Son, but He has grace for us wherever we are right now on that journey, and He bids us to come to Him.  He will give us rest and take that load off our shoulders.  He can carry what we cannot and what we were never meant to bear.  There are many things that may offer us a version of rest, a temporary reprieve, but if we’re craving for the kind of rest that goes soul deep, may we simply go unto Jesus and find our rest in Him.