Rest...its just around the corner

Matthew 11:28-30

New International Version (NIV)

²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ 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. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

So I decided to write something personal, something more personal than I’d care to admit or probably would never admit it out loud to someone else. To hear myself saying it will just sound insane. So here I am writing about something I’d never let my voice say…but then again, they say, never say never.

It happened a while back (read forever ago) but still the memory of it brings a tinge of pain. In my mind I had built this idea and thought that I had it all figured out... that my days in the market were done, that I had already found THE ONE! I had built this world and in the frenzy of living in my utopia world, I failed to notice the warning signs along the way. it’s like I was sure of my very next move and it didn’t matter whatever else would happen, I was determined to make it work... so here I was bearing my all, knocking on a door that was never going to be opened. Calling out for a response that was never going to come…but no! I was determined! And I was taught never to give up along the way. I was taught quitters never win and winners never quit! So I continued forward ignoring anything that said it wouldn’t work. Eventually the silence became clear that the response would never come and the door would never open and by the time that epiphany was coming through, the damage was already done.

So amidst the blurry vision barricaded by my tears, a thought came through…a desperate one for answers, but still an intriguing one. The search for rest was slowly taking a toll. So I thought, what if the law allowed us to sue for a broken heart? Sue for the tears we cried, sue for the heartache that actually feels like physical pain, sue for the days of confusion, walking around with a cloud over our heads, walking as if the world had just been placed over our shoulders…sue for the days when the world seemed like one big scary place, sue for the hurtful words that were said in anger, sue for the moments we wished the past was somehow different.

Would it make our pain go away?  Would we forget the pain we went through? Would it brighten our day? Would it make it all better? Would we feel a sense of closure once the case is done? Would we be able to move on immediately the case was done? Would it erase the painful memories we dearly hold on to instead of dearly letting them go? Would it make it easier for us to walk away without regret and even in some cases revenge?

Life would have been a lot easier if we had a manual that gave direction for everything. Gave us direction of how to wash away the memories. Gave us direction of how to block out the painful memories that sting our eyes with tears. A manual that gave us the step by step of how to live without regret. A manual that showed us what to do next. A manual that gave us a map to direct us to that ‘place’ where rest was the lifestyle.

But when you think about it, we do have that manual. And for me that’s the Holy Bible. Back then the clarity wasn’t all that, but now, nothing has ever been so clear! And I know you are wondering where all that I’ve asked above can be helped using the Bible…(I probably asked myself that a few times.) but the Good Book clearly tell us in Matthew 11:28-30 to go to Him all who are weary and are heavy burned, and a broken heart is a burden on its own. It’s like carrying a burden and you are standing in a crowd screaming your heart out for help, but no one except you can hear you. No one can lift the burden from your weak, feeble and now tired hands.

And we do crazy things all in the name of searching for that ‘elusive rest’ and many of us live with the ideology of desperate times call for desperate measures. But I challenge it and say, desperate times call for a time to stop and re-evaluate …the desperate measures probably will add do more harm than good...so STOP! Drop all the plans made and go back to Him who has the manual, He wrote it and it’s at His feet where we can get ultimate rest! Anything else we do outside THE Manual, only gives us a temporary solution and after a while, we’ll realize that whatever answer we had, was just a pigment of our imagination of what the answer would be! So take a back seat and let God be the driver, He’s got this! Coz in the end, it all works out okay, all for His glory, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.