²⁹ Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:29 NLT)

…and you will find rest for your souls.

There is so much in this single line of scripture to unpack, but today let us focus upon rest.

COVID has seemed to slow life down for some, but it has sped life up and created a greater burden on others. It has changed so many aspects of life that it can now be even harder to find any form of rest for those who’s lives sped up.

Now, to be sure, we bring much of this upon ourselves. We pack our days with meetings and events. We pack our weekends with the activities we cannot get to during the week. And we stack on top of all of that our incessant need to be connected via our electronics. There is scarce time in all of that to sleep, much less truly rest.

Rest has forever been an elusive thing. I think this is especially true in America. Burnout is such a common topic because we do not understand true rest. Rest is more than sleep and we get those confused.

What Christ is saying to us in this scripture is that through Him we can find true rest. Deep rest. Rest down to our souls. This can be found in Christ because it allows us to relinquish our concerns over security. We can take on Christ light yoke and remove our heavy yoke. We can learn and be taught how to step away from our busy lives into the loving rest of Christ.