Devotion: You Will Find Rest For Your Souls
Please take a moment to read Matthew 11:28-30
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom will come on earth as well as in heaven. I believe God’s kingdom on earth comes to us as we trust in him, opening our hearts to experience his presence and join in God’s work in the world.
There is enormous peace and joy when we experience God’s kingdom in this earthly life. We know what it is to be close to God, to be right with God. But this is still the earth, and as hard as we try, we continue to sin. When we recognize our sin, confess it, repent of it, and ask for forgiveness, God graciously restores our relationship, and our peace and our joy.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus continually proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven is near. In Matthew 11:28-30, he invites us to God’s earthly kingdom. The Message translation of the Bible puts it this way:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live freely and lightly with Jesus? So many of us today live lives of stress that allow little margin for delays, illness, or spontaneous fun. We are always seeking to do more, and more is never enough. More never satisfies our desire for more.
This is not the way of Jesus. Jesus tells us that we need to rest in him, and together we’ll move through this world and find peace with and through him. Together we’ll do God’s work in the world.
Jesus invites us to think critically about our lives. Why do we choose to fill our lives with so many things, goals, activities, obligations and things we “should” do? What do we hope to gain? Who do we hope to benefit? What do we gain instead? What if we lived our lives differently? What if we saved time for rest, recreation and nurturing our relationships? What if we protected this time as the sacred space it is?
I think back to the pandemic when COVID forced us to experience the “unforced rhythms of grace” as we stayed home, slept more, read more and spent unhurried time with family members. Renewed by this shift, many people reconfigured their lives. They changed jobs or reduced their hours or made another career choice. They worked with their children to schedule fewer activities in order to make family time a priority. This change in outlook was called the hidden blessing of the pandemic.
These few years later, we seem to have forgotten this hidden lesson. As a society, we’re back to being busy, busy, busy again. We need the rest, the relief, the unforced rhythms of grace. We need Jesus. We need to experience God’s kingdom on earth.
Come to Jesus.
Gracious Lord, help me to do life differently. Show me what I can change, how I can change, to have the life you want for me. Help me to trust in you as we do this together. Amen.
Written by Cheryl Stubbendieck
Cheryl Stubbendieck is a member of Sheridan’s Devotion Writing Team and leads the Wednesday Morning Women’s Bible Study as well as Sheridan’s Cardmakers. She and her husband Jim have two sons: Aaron, his wife Chaitra and their sons Theo and Nathan live in Houston; Reed lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.