Matthew 11:28-30 “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.”

Since the warmer weather has hit here in New England I have been fairly consumed with yard work and spending time outside. I would prefer to chalk it up to a reaction from being cooped up all winter and feeling a little stir crazy. The reality is it’s likely more of a heart problem than a need to expend energy.

At first my yard work was out of excitement to get the yard summer ready. Mowing the lawn, seeding the sparse patches, filling in the holes from the trees I had taken down last year, cleaning the decaying debris left from the previous fall. It started as normal sprint “just tidying up a bit”. However, bit by bit, I continued to mentally add “just one more thing” that needed to be tended to. As my project list grew my determination to complete it all also increased.

We all know that home ownership can easily lead to a life of “always something needing to be done”. It’s true. Marry this with a naturally bent type A personality and a stubborn will that desires to finish well, and it can be a recipe for certain disaster.

Over the weeks of work my satisfaction grew with each finished assignment. One section at a time my yard began to transform into something more beautiful every day. The problem is that no matter how much work I put into it there were two huge looming areas that I could not possibly resolve on my own, and without copious finances: the hilly back yard and the deteriorating front stairs and retaining wall.

Enter the even larger heart issue: resentment. Oh my good old friend the bitter root. I wish it wasn’t something I was so accustomed to, but when you have lived a life of continual heartache and trauma it happens to be an all too familiar face. Take heart though, just because it presents opportunity for germination often doesn’t mean you are doomed to be destroyed by the plague of it flourishing. The key is not allowing it to take root and grow.

My resentment was stemming from frustration of being “left with this mess to clean up”. I began to feel alone and abandoned all over again. The pain of rejection began to crop up in my heart until my other old friend pride came along. I switched gears quickly from resentment to sucking it up, pulling up my boot straps, and setting my sights on being just fine all by myself; determined to get it all done, no matter what. The cost ended up being a quite humbling trip to the local urgent care, but that’s a story for another day.

It seems I had fallen into the trap of being quite like Martha when I needed to spend a little more time at the feet of Jesus as Mary did. I was picking up the yolk on my own all along. The truth is I can’t do this on my own. I wasn’t built to tend to a house, raise children, and take care of myself entirely on my own power and strength. Even when I am relying on the strength of Christ to accomplish these things, I will still have limitations on what I can physically do before injury or burnout present themselves as reality. The truth is I never wanted to be alone raising children and keeping a house together but yet, here I am in just that position.

So what do we do when we are faced with a circumstance in life where we are not where we expected to be, and yet there we are? I would love to run and hide or start again and have a proper re-do, but that’s not realistic or emotionally productive.

I think the best thing we can do is remember what God has promised us.

In my current situation I am clinging to this promise that Jesus gives us below:

Matthew 11:28-30 “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.”

If we come to him, He will give us rest. Let us run to the feet of our Father and choose to believe that He will give us the rest that he promises! The key is we have to go to Him in order to get that promised rest: the beauty is He waits for us.

Then He tells us to take his yoke – which is easy and light – and to learn from him. This sounds so counterintuitive that he is promising us rest yet it comes in the form of learning. Usually what Jesus tells us to do is contradictory of what we would naturally do. I’m certain that if I wanted to find rest on my own the first thing would not be to attempt to learn something. However, when we spend time with Jesus and learn from him, we get just that. We get the rest that we are searching for because he refreshes our souls just by spending time with Him! It is such a beautiful thing and I will likely never understand the complexity of how it works, but I have experienced it first hand so I know it works; and that is all that matters.

In Jennie Allen’s book “Nothing to Prove” she describes the yolk in this passage from Matthew like this:

“I look, and there’s this enormous Ox beside me. There I am, little me strapped in next to an enormous Ox, and it’s God. He was always there. The reason I could rest wasn’t because the job is easy, and it wasn’t because I am capable of achieving it. It was only because I was strapped in next to GOD. He would do the work, and I could rest because He is so strong, so good, so kind.”

I don’t know the load you are carrying today, but what would change in the way you were carrying it if you remembered that God was strapped in right beside you? I imagine that if we lived life remembering this we might avoid the deadly pits of pride and resentment all together because our hearts would be at peace knowing who’s we are! Oh how wonderful it will be when we have arrived in Heaven and our flesh will no longer keep us from walking without sin! In the mean time we can turn from our ways and repent and seek forgiveness from our Heavenly Father and let him restore our broken hearts. Praise Jesus!

Let’s pray.

Father, Thank you so much for your patience. For pursuing your children as a gentle and humble God. For your rest that you offer us freely just by spending time with you. We long for your presence to be near and yet all we need to do is turn and face you and there you are; waiting as you always have been for us to come home. Your love for us is magnificent and beyond compare and we take it for granted so often, yet it never waivers, not even for a second. Keep us from the entanglement of bitter roots, the ensnarement of pride, and the deception of being alone and forgotten. Forgive us for the times we allow pride to fester and bitterness to grow. Help us to rip this sin out from our hearts right at the source that we may glorify you all the more! You know each and every one of us personally and completely, help us to remember that you have a plan for our lives and help us to be obedient in following you well through our days. In Jesus name, Amen.