God calls us to rest by worshipping him
Weary! Are you ever weary? Do you ever come home from work, from school, from running innumerable errands, from spending a long day at the doctors’ office, and just drop in a chair, slump down (sigh!) and just say “I’ve had it, I’m too pooped to continue, I need a break?”
We all get there, don’t we? Evelyn and I are retired, yet there are days when we just need to lie down in the afternoon, and recover from the efforts put out that day. Tension, stress, physical work can leave us exhausted and unable to cope with the requirements of the day.
Sometimes we just need a break from the routine, a day or two where we just relax and do nothing. And there are times when we just need to do something different from the daily routine. Evelyn and I have our hobbies that take our minds off the concerns of the day. Others find relaxation in golf, or fishing, or hunting. Taking time for avocations is healthy, indeed critical if health is to be maintained.
Jesus Christ found it necessary to retreat from his daily routines. Several times he retreats into the hills and mountains to separate himself from the masses that were continually following him. We also need times to recover from our daily stresses and problems.
And Holy Scripture gives us some good guidance. Isaiah, chapter 50, verse 4: “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.” Verses 2 & 3: “When I (God) came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Was my arm too short to ransom you? Do I lack the strength to rescue you? By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea, I turn rivers into a desert; their fish rot for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the sky with darkness and make sackcloth its covering.” God has all power: He has created all things, is he too weak to help you when you are weary?
Jesus Christ says, “Come to me you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). That doesn’t mean he will take away all our problems; he will not solve our financial woes, he doesn’t heal our ills with a wave of his hand, but he does give us the means to deal with them. God has the power to ransom us, to rescue us from our earthly woes. And he has done this through Jesus Christ.
We need time to rest and recuperate, and God calls us to rest by worshiping him in his house, the church. We are to regularly set aside time to worship him and thank him for all the blessings he bestows on us. And the greatest blessing he gives us is eternal life. In Jesus Christ we have life. He died on the cross, paying the penalty for all our sins, and gives us life through his resurrection from the dead. He died that we might live. Not just a continuing life on Earth, but eternal life with him in his eternal kingdom.
We will continue to have problems in this life and will be weary of it, but God rescues us from it. He gives us the assurance that these problems will not last forever, the day is coming when he will call us from this world and usher us into his eternal world, where these hard times come to an end.
Hobbies and avocations are good; it is good to take time for golf or fishing, but we dare not let these pastimes draw us away from our regular worship of God. He wants our praise and worship, and he gives us rest and strength when we take the time to thank him for the great gift he has given us, eternal rest from the anxieties and hardships of this world.
It would be easy to throw up our hands and state “I’ve had it. I’m through, I give up.” But we stay the course, confident of Jesus’ presence. Even as he intercedes for us in heaven, he also walks with us, steadying us, strengthening us, giving us that power to continue; he assures us that there is a reward for those who stay the course, that in him we have already won the trophy, the victory is ours. We may get weary from our day to day struggle, but we look forward to that trophy and we are strengthened to continue to the end. I know I am, are you?