Give You Rest

As soon as our kids left for school, I drove up to the hospital for a quick visit to see Michael.    When I got up to his room, he was resting quite peacefully.  Sarah, who had stayed with him shared that he or rather, they had not gotten much sleep the night before and so Michael was tired.

And it made me think.  Because there are going to be times in life, where we are a little tired and a little weary.

I’ll be honest.  I’ve been there these past few days.  Life is always going at such a fast pace, but it seems like it was extra hard to catch up this week.  And I could feel the weariness slowly creep in and before I knew it, it had settled into my heart and my mind.

And often times, with weariness, comes all sorts of other emotions.  Somehow, they seem to grow big quickly making everything quite overwhelming at times.  But it’s in these times, that Jesus calls us to come to him and to rest.

A few years ago, during Eleven, which is our Jr. and Sr. High Sunday morning group, we met up together.  Michael was there, and from the looks of it, he may have been feeling a bit weary himself that morning.

It was fine through.  Because on that particular Sunday, we had decided to have a “Family Breakfast” all together.  I whipped up a few batches of Swedish Pancakes with Bacon on the side.  And it was a nice and peaceful morning, spent all together, enjoying my Mom’s famous pancakes with some of our amazing friends and students.  It was probably the perfect way to spend a weary morning because there is something about a little time and some good food and good company that brings rest to the weary soul.

There are going to be many times in life that we feel tired and weary.  We fill up our lives so full that we forget to make times to rest and we just go and go and go.  And then we break down at some point, because I’m quite sure that we were never meant to be so busy that we couldn’t catch a break.  Or maybe it’s the worries and discouragement of our lives that can weigh our hearts so heavy.  Often times it’s so easy to focus on the things that we have no control over, fooling ourselves into thinking that we can figure it all out, but mostly just distracting us from doing what we should.

Whatever the case, Jesus had a response in Matthew 11:28.  And it was to come to Him and receive His rest.  In Matthew 11:29, we are reminded that we have a wonderful Savior who will teach us and who is gentle and humble in heart.  And he promises that when we do this, we will find a reward of rest for our weary souls.  We were never created to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.  But we were created to call and to come to Jesus.  So when you are feeling tired or worn out from life, remember this beautiful truth.

Whereas Michael did sleep through a good portion of my early morning visit, he did decide to wake up for about ten minutes right before I left.  I was so happy, because this meant that I was able to hold his hands and catch him up on the good things that were happening that day.  And as with yesterday, he made some good eye contact with me as I shared and also moved both of his hands together with mine.

Right before I said goodbye, I told Michael I had to go and asked if he would turn his head a bit to look at me.  Granted, I’m not really in the business of making people do things, but thought that it might be good to encourage him to try to interact.  And whereas he didn’t turn his head, he did curl up the right side of his mouth into what Sarah and I decided was a bit of a smile.  And that was pretty much the perfect way to end a great morning visit.

Thank you to everyone who continues to follow Michael’s story and to pray so faithfully for him.  Please pray as he gets ready for his upcoming shunt surgery.  Please pray specifically for the doctor and the nurses who will be part of the surgery and even just for wisdom for the main surgeon that he would know the best ways to help Michael and his future recovery.