“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
MATTHEW 11:28-29 (CSB)

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“But why do I have to rest when I’m not tired?” To my elementary-aged mind, it was a fair question respectfully asked. 

How and why and when questions tumbled over one another without satisfying answers. Sometimes it still feels like we are elementary-aged children with tired parents who long for a few moments of respite.

Sometimes we experience enforced stillness at the very moments we had other plans. Perhaps the moments of silent waiting linger too long. Shadows formed against the light of an otherwise lovely day lull us toward naps without utility. 

One can only engage in restless rest for so long before the unbidden questions from the darkness creep toward the opening where light and shadows shift. 

Now and again the only true rest is discovered anew in the well-worn rhythms of a day well spent in productive labor. Yes, strength has waned. Yes, the weight of an unchosen burden forces effort more focused, less energetic. 

In such a moment, Jesus proves true to his promise. He teaches as we work with him in tandem, yoked to his supreme strength, his endless energy, his merciful gentleness. He teaches lessons unconsidered beforehand. The grooves are just right for his sure grip. The strokes are works of genius and originality. At the end of the effort, he smiles and says, “Look what we did.” 

The thought was his. The execution was his. The perfect application of mind and muscle was all his. He included me and credited me with something I never could have accomplished on my own. 

Isn’t that the way he always works? 

The brilliance of the sun, the shades of green beyond the window, the shadows of limbs, leaves, and curtains lull me toward another afternoon of silent stillness.

“But why do I have to rest when I’m not tired?”

Sometimes a season requires rest out of time to master new movements, new rhythms of grace and wonder. So shadow and light playfully draw me toward rest I did not know was needed. So silence and stillness work healing grace in bones and muscles recently stressed and reshaped.

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I will rest when I’m not tired that I may walk in the right paths when I am.

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Our Father, for this season of rest out of time with clocks and calendars, I give you thanks. There are lessons here I could not learn otherwise. There are truths here I have missed in my efficiency and effectiveness. There is unconscious awareness forming in this stillness. Thank you for your rhythms of grace. Amen.