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Publications I Am With You Always Meeting Jesus in Every Season of Life By Gerrit Scott Dawson Chapter 1: Come to Me Matthew 11:28-30 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
Once, I led a Bible study group in which I asked people to choose a one or two word description for the current state of their lives. More than half chose some form of “Stressed Out.” And when I asked what phrase they wished they could choose instead, these same people replied, “Peaceful.” Perhaps you, too, would have nodded in agreement. We are a restless people, unable to get out from under the daily demands that weigh us down from dawn to midnight. We do not know how to still the wanting, wandering heart within that never quite knows what it wants except that it must be something other than what it has. I remember watching my younger son opening his Christmas presents when he was 15 months old. He was as interested in the wrapping paper as the presents themselves. And he was in no hurry to move on. “Let’s shake this box. And let’s taste that ribbon!” But the rest of us had gifts to open, and dinners to attend. We began shoving presents toward the child who was contentedly absorbed in trying to encompass the nose of a large stuffed animal with his own tiny mouth. “Poor guy,” I thought, “You’ll learn soon enough to be like the rest of us – always on to the next thing.” And he did. “Come to me,” said Jesus, “All you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” It’s such a personal invitation. He seems to know us just as we are, as if to say, “I know you’re tired from life in this world. I understand that you’re burdened by expectations. Perhaps you think you are alone, cut off from God and sent to carry on as best you can on your own. I know. Come to me and I will give you rest. You will see that you are never alone. Learn from me, for I am gentle and you will find rest for your souls.” A great theologian has said that nowhere is God’s supreme greatness so clearly seen than in the gentleness with which he approaches us in Jesus. Only the Almighty could come casting aside all trappings of royalty to issue this humble invitation. He asks us to come to him when he himself has already come all the way to where we are. And he continues to arrive on the threshold of our hearts in every stage and situation of life. Jesus invites us to look up for a moment from the burdens of the day and see him waiting for us with open arms. Of course he could overwhelm our frail frames with one breath. But the Son of God is gentle and humble of heart. He comes to us, and then he waits for us to turn to him. Sources of weariness Jesus knew that his people were burdened. As we think about their lives, we may identify three sources of their weariness, and then make comparisons with today. First, daily life in itself was demanding. The people worked as fishers, farmers, shepherds and merchants. They lived close to the land and sea, working hard to gather meager fruit from constant labor. Technology and medical care were primitive. Life-spans were short. Pain was simply part of being alive. The people in Jesus’ day bore a heavy load just to get by. But the second weariness arose from the reality that they were no longer a free people. Rome ruled the country. The days of independence for the people of God were long gone, kept alive only in the hopes for a Messiah, and the covert schemings of rebel groups. They knew themselves to be subjects. And for all the order and stability the Romans supposedly brought, there were heavy taxes to pay. Many independent farmers had lost their lands and become tenants. A nation that had once flourished with its own culture and wealth was now a remote outpost providing a stream of revenue to the emperor in Rome. But even this could have been borne had the people not experienced the third source of weariness. They felt cut off from their God. The influential religious leaders known as the Pharisees had arisen as a group dedicated to preserving the faith of Israel amidst the force of cultural absorption by Rome. By meticulously keeping the law, they held onto their identity as God’s people, and kept alive the hope that God would one day remember Israel and restore their nation. But along the way they had distorted the law of God as they added more duties to “hedge” the law so that one would not even come close to disobeying it. Then, they turned their observances into a legalism to be imposed on others. The average person had no chance of maintaining such standards of purity. Not only did the people have to bear the sense of judgment that Roman rule brought, but they had to relate to God under a continuing message that they were spiritually unclean and therefore unworthy to approach a holy God. Into this atmosphere, Jesus came with his loving invitation. The weight of everyday We, too, know what it is to be weary from the demands of daily life. I imagine a woman who looks in the mirror and notices the lines of care, even as she remembers how smooth and creamy that face had been, not so very long ago. She rises early, always before she has had enough sleep, to dress, make lunches, and get the others out the door on time. Work is demanding but the compensation is never enough. She manages, though, to keep her job in its own compartment. For after work there are practices and meetings, and her own aged mother to check on. No matter how modern her family may seem, the usual preparation of dinner and keeping up the house fall to her. It is late before she finally falls into bed, still feeling behind. There is also tiredness that comes from working for someone who holds tremendous power over our well-being. I imagine a man who feels the pressure to perform at work day after day, and perhaps feels just a measure short all the time. He’s worked his way from the bottom to the middle. He has come to realize that he probably won’t go much higher. He can reconcile himself to that reality, but he is terrified of where he might fall. In a heartbeat, he could be replaced with someone younger, quicker, cheaper. And he knows his life is not his own. The mortgage on the house has a long way to go. He didn’t mean to get further into debt, but the remodeling had to be done and now the kids seem to need more and more all the time. This man can’t stop; he can’t get sick; he must stay at it. Too many people require something from him. Rome rules, though it has taken a new name. And this man is so tired. In the midst of such pressures, we would hope that people could find a source of strength in God. But all too often, we labor under the third source of weariness just as ancient Israel did. We feel cut off from God because we cannot measure up to his standards. Somehow, we have accepted the mistaken notion that God’s attitude toward us begins with a huge IF. “If you keep all my commands, if you go to church all the time, if you pray like a saint, if you are good and don’t do what you want to do but always just do religious things, if you do all of that, then I will love you and bless you.” Under such conditions, we have to feel that God’s basic disposition toward us is displeasure. God has to be against us, because we can never be (in fact we don’t even want to be) the holy, spiritual people we think God requires. In this kind of thinking, we are left on our own. Since God must not want anything we want, it’s up to us to build our lives and pursue our own fulfillment. Even Christians join the culture in the restless quest to fill our emptiness with satisfying experiences. Though we know better in our souls, we buy into the illusion that we actually can attain what we need. So, we quest after the next holiday abroad, the new accolade at work, the achievement of our children, the purchase of the right piece of furniture, the savoring of the latest restaurant. Each provides a temporary satisfaction. We receive a momentary ease for our lonely, restless lives. But then, like my son at Christmas, we’re pushed on to the next thing. And there may seem to be no way off this road along which everyone rushes. God must be against us, since we have been so unreligious in our pursuits and fulfilled so few of his supposed conditions. We’re worn out, but we can’t stop. Banks and businesses, media and personal expectations seem to have us on a forced march. We just can’t keep up anymore, but we don’t know another way. The yoke that eases our burden To us Jesus speaks softly, in a voice that penetrates our desperation with a calming tone, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” God is not against us, but for us! He has come to us in Jesus Christ offering what we long for: rest, the sense of peace, the underlying assurance that all is well and we are kept in loving arms. Jesus speaks to those who bear so many burdens of responsibility, and goes on to say, “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” (Matt. 11:29-30). A yoke is a frame used to connect a pair of working animals to each other and the burden they are pulling. It can also be the frame a person would carry over the shoulders with a bucket or sack balanced on each end. Yokes, therefore, have long been a symbol of service. A man in my congregation suggested how interesting it is that Jesus, the son of a carpenter, used this image. Wooden yokes in those days would have been individually made to suit the unique shape of the animals doing the work. With a good fit, chaffing and discomfort would be prevented while efficiency would be increased. The carpenter would understand the difference between a yoke that made every step an agony and a yoke which enabled the animal to do the work the day required. We all wear the yoke that links us to the responsibilities and demands of the daily world. Often, this yoke becomes a symbol of our weariness. Jesus tells us that God has a new yoke for us to wear. It involves a new field for us to follow and a new direction for us to tread. Yes, it is a burden to turn around in our lives and come to Jesus. But Jesus’ tender assurance is that his yoke will not be too difficult. It will fit comfortably. Jesus’ way will feel like the life we have always wanted to live, the road we have always dreamed we should walk. His burden is not heavy because it is the one we were made to bear. In fact, in taking his yoke, we will be linked to him and all he has to give us. In Jesus’ invitation we may hear that we were never meant to go it alone in this hard life. God’s disposition toward us is fundamentally one of invitation and love. We need no longer travel along the exhausting highway of trying to make our lives work on our own. The culture may tell us that such self-pursuit is freedom, but we may know the truth now. Being alone, cut off from God, is the worst kind of slavery. For then we cannot get out of ourselves. And so our weary souls can never find rest. But now there is a way home. “Come to me,” says Jesus, “Learn from me.” We may come home to Jesus because he has first come all the way down to where we are. Now we may turn to him because he is not far removed from us in a cloud of disapproving holiness. He is here. His arms are open in welcoming acceptance. The Son of God has come so close to the world he loves that he has actually taken to himself our skin and bones. Experiencing our weariness from within a human body, he knows the burdens we bear. Jesus entered our lost and exhausted condition. From the inside out, he has felt in his body our tiredness and seen with human eyes the loneliness in our eyes. He came so close that we could actually smell the dust of travel on his robes and hear the tenor of his voice. From the position of being among us, Jesus invites us to turn to him and find rest. This does not mean that Jesus promises that the burdens of life will disappear. Turning toward him may mean no change in the difficult external circumstances of our lives. What he offers is a peace in the soul that enables us to have strength to carry on. As we learn from him, we begin to see purpose and meaning even in the midst of suffering. Life takes on a larger, deeper perspective. And best of all, in a most profound way, we learn that we are not alone. We are with him, and he is with us. Jesus brings life in abundance, and his vivid presence lifts us out of ourselves and so lifts our weariness. This book is meant to help us answer Jesus’ invitation. He implores us to come and learn from him. So we will turn our attention towards Jesus as we consider a series of stories from the gospels. We will consider accounts of how Jesus came to people in every situation of life with his gentle, humble heart continually offering his gracious love. And we will look at significant events from Jesus’ own life to see how even in his suffering he gave himself to us. In each case, we will try to make the connection between the people of Jesus’ day and our lives now. I invite you to take on the yoke of turning towards Jesus through considering these stories with an expectant heart. “Come to me,” he says. As you turn the pages in this book, join me in replying, “I’m here, Lord. Let me learn from you.”
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