PLC Publications
I Am With You Always
Meeting Jesus in Every Season of Life
By Gerrit Scott Dawson
Chapter 1: Come to Me
Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
He came to us with an invitation. The Son of God
stooped so low as to be joined with human flesh, limiting
himself to the world of dust and swiftly passing time –
in order to give us a personal appeal. “Come to me.”
Jesus made the first move, crossing the divide between God and
humanity, showing us his very heart. And his word to a weary,
burdened people was “Come to me and I will give you rest.”
Once, I led a Bible study group in which I asked people to
choose a one or two word description for the current state of
their lives. More than half chose some form of “Stressed
Out.” And when I asked what phrase they wished they could
choose instead, these same people replied, “Peaceful.”
Perhaps you, too, would have nodded in agreement. We are a
restless people, unable to get out from under the daily
demands that weigh us down from dawn to midnight. We do not
know how to still the wanting, wandering heart within that
never quite knows what it wants except that it must be
something other than what it has.
I remember watching my younger son opening his Christmas
presents when he was 15 months old. He was as interested in
the wrapping paper as the presents themselves. And he was in
no hurry to move on. “Let’s shake this box. And let’s
taste that ribbon!” But the rest of us had gifts to open,
and dinners to attend. We began shoving presents toward the
child who was contentedly absorbed in trying to encompass the
nose of a large stuffed animal with his own tiny mouth. “Poor
guy,” I thought, “You’ll learn soon enough to
be like the rest of us – always on to the next thing.”
And he did.
“Come to me,” said Jesus, “All you who are
weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” It’s
such a personal invitation. He seems to know us just as we
are, as if to say, “I know you’re tired from life in
this world. I understand that you’re burdened by
expectations. Perhaps you think you are alone, cut off from
God and sent to carry on as best you can on your own. I know.
Come to me and I will give you rest. You will see that you are
never alone. Learn from me, for I am gentle and you will find
rest for your souls.”
A great theologian has said that nowhere is God’s supreme
greatness so clearly seen than in the gentleness with which he
approaches us in Jesus. Only the Almighty could come casting
aside all trappings of royalty to issue this humble
invitation. He asks us to come to him when he himself has
already come all the way to where we are. And he continues to
arrive on the threshold of our hearts in every stage and
situation of life. Jesus invites us to look up for a moment
from the burdens of the day and see him waiting for us with
open arms. Of course he could overwhelm our frail frames with
one breath. But the Son of God is gentle and humble of heart.
He comes to us, and then he waits for us to turn to him.
Sources of Weariness
Jesus knew that his people were burdened. As we think about
their lives, we may identify three sources of their weariness,
and then make comparisons with today. First, daily life in
itself was demanding. The people worked as fishers, farmers,
shepherds and merchants. They lived close to the land and sea,
working hard to gather meager fruit from constant labor.
Technology and medical care were primitive. Life-spans were
short. Pain was simply part of being alive.
The people in Jesus’ day bore a heavy load just to get
by. But the second weariness arose from the reality that they
were no longer a free people. Rome ruled the country. The days
of independence for the people of God were long gone, kept
alive only in the hopes for a Messiah, and the covert
schemings of rebel groups. They knew themselves to be
subjects. And for all the order and stability the Romans
supposedly brought, there were heavy taxes to pay. Many
independent farmers had lost their lands and become tenants. A
nation that had once flourished with its own culture and
wealth was now a remote outpost providing a stream of revenue
to the emperor in Rome.
But even this could have been borne had the people not
experienced the third source of weariness. They felt cut off
from their God. The influential religious leaders known as the
Pharisees had arisen as a group dedicated to preserving the
faith of Israel amidst the force of cultural absorption by
Rome. By meticulously keeping the law, they held onto their
identity as God’s people, and kept alive the hope that
God would one day remember Israel and restore their nation.
But along the way they had distorted the law of God as they
added more duties to “hedge” the law so that one
would not even come close to disobeying it. Then, they turned
their observances into a legalism to be imposed on others.
The average person had no chance of maintaining such standards
of purity. Not only did the people have to bear the sense of
judgment that Roman rule brought, but they had to relate to
God under a continuing message that they were spiritually
unclean and therefore unworthy to approach a holy God. Into
this atmosphere, Jesus came with his loving invitation.
The Weight of Everyday
We, too, know what it is to be weary from the demands of daily
life. I imagine a woman who looks in the mirror and notices
the lines of care, even as she remembers how smooth and creamy
that face had been, not so very long ago. She rises early,
always before she has had enough sleep, to dress, make
lunches, and get the others out the door on time. Work is
demanding but the compensation is never enough. She manages,
though, to keep her job in its own compartment. For after work
there are practices and meetings, and her own aged mother to
check on. No matter how modern her family may seem, the usual
preparation of dinner and keeping up the house fall to her. It
is late before she finally falls into bed, still feeling
behind.
There is also tiredness that comes from working for someone
who holds tremendous power over our well-being. I imagine a
man who feels the pressure to perform at work day after day,
and perhaps feels just a measure short all the time. He’s
worked his way from the bottom to the middle. He has come to
realize that he probably won’t go much higher. He can
reconcile himself to that reality, but he is terrified of
where he might fall. In a heartbeat, he could be replaced with
someone younger, quicker, cheaper. And he knows his life is
not his own. The mortgage on the house has a long way to go.
He didn’t mean to get further into debt, but the
remodeling had to be done and now the kids seem to need more
and more all the time. This man can’t stop; he can’t
get sick; he must stay at it. Too many people require
something from him. Rome rules, though it has taken a new
name. And this man is so tired.
In the midst of such pressures, we would hope that people
could find a source of strength in God. But all too often, we
labor under the third source of weariness just as ancient
Israel did. We feel cut off from God because we cannot measure
up to his standards. Somehow, we have accepted the mistaken
notion that God’s attitude toward us begins with a huge
IF. “
If you keep all my commands,
if you
go to church all the time,
if you pray like a saint,
if you are good and don’t do what you want to do
but always just do religious things,
if you do all of
that, then I will love you and bless you.” Under such
conditions, we have to feel that God’s basic disposition
toward us is displeasure. God has to be against us, because we
can never be (in fact we don’t even want to be) the holy,
spiritual people we think God requires.
In this kind of thinking, we are left on our own. Since God
must not want anything we want, it’s up to us to build
our lives and pursue our own fulfillment. Even Christians join
the culture in the restless quest to fill our emptiness with
satisfying experiences. Though we know better in our souls, we
buy into the illusion that we actually can attain what we
need. So, we quest after the next holiday abroad, the new
accolade at work, the achievement of our children, the
purchase of the right piece of furniture, the savoring of the
latest restaurant. Each provides a temporary satisfaction. We
receive a momentary ease for our lonely, restless lives. But
then, like my son at Christmas, we’re pushed on to the
next thing.
And there may seem to be no way off this road along which
everyone rushes. God must be against us, since we have been so
unreligious in our pursuits and fulfilled so few of his
supposed conditions. We’re worn out, but we can’t
stop. Banks and businesses, media and personal expectations
seem to have us on a forced march. We just can’t keep up
anymore, but we don’t know another way.
The yoke that eases our burden
To us Jesus speaks softly, in a voice that penetrates our
desperation with a calming tone, “Come to me, all you who
are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” God
is not against us, but for us! He has come to us in Jesus
Christ offering what we long for: rest, the sense of peace,
the underlying assurance that all is well and we are kept in
loving arms.
Jesus speaks to those who bear so many burdens of
responsibility, and goes on to say, “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. For my yoke is easy and
my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29-30). A yoke is a frame
used to connect a pair of working animals to each other and
the burden they are pulling. It can also be the frame a person
would carry over the shoulders with a bucket or sack balanced
on each end. Yokes, therefore, have long been a symbol of
service. A man in my congregation suggested how interesting it
is that Jesus, the son of a carpenter, used this image. Wooden
yokes in those days would have been individually made to suit
the unique shape of the animals doing the work. With a good
fit, chaffing and discomfort would be prevented while
efficiency would be increased. The carpenter would understand
the difference between a yoke that made every step an agony
and a yoke which enabled the animal to do the work the day
required.
We all wear the yoke that links us to the responsibilities and
demands of the daily world. Often, this yoke becomes a symbol
of our weariness. Jesus tells us that God has a new yoke for
us to wear. It involves a new field for us to follow and a new
direction for us to tread. Yes, it is a burden to turn around
in our lives and come to Jesus. But Jesus’ tender
assurance is that his yoke will not be too difficult. It will
fit comfortably. Jesus’ way will feel like the life we
have always wanted to live, the road we have always dreamed we
should walk. His burden is not heavy because it is the one we
were made to bear. In fact, in taking his yoke, we will be
linked to him and all he has to give us.
In Jesus’ invitation we may hear that we were never meant
to go it alone in this hard life. God’s disposition
toward us is fundamentally one of invitation and love. We need
no longer travel along the exhausting highway of trying to
make our lives work on our own. The culture may tell us that
such self-pursuit is freedom, but we may know the truth now.
Being alone, cut off from God, is the worst kind of slavery.
For then we cannot get out of ourselves. And so our weary
souls can never find rest. But now there is a way home. “Come
to me,” says Jesus, “Learn from me.”
We may come home to Jesus because he has first come all the
way down to where we are. Now we may turn to him because he is
not far removed from us in a cloud of disapproving holiness.
He is here. His arms are open in welcoming acceptance. The Son
of God has come so close to the world he loves that he has
actually taken to himself our skin and bones. Experiencing our
weariness from within a human body, he knows the burdens we
bear. Jesus entered our lost and exhausted condition. From the
inside out, he has felt in his body our tiredness and seen
with human eyes the loneliness in our eyes. He came so close
that we could actually smell the dust of travel on his robes
and hear the tenor of his voice. From the position of being
among us, Jesus invites us to turn to him and find rest.
This does not mean that Jesus promises that the burdens of
life will disappear. Turning toward him may mean no change in
the difficult external circumstances of our lives. What he
offers is a peace in the soul that enables us to have strength
to carry on. As we learn from him, we begin to see purpose and
meaning even in the midst of suffering. Life takes on a
larger, deeper perspective. And best of all, in a most
profound way, we learn that we are not alone. We are with him,
and he is with us. Jesus brings life in abundance, and his
vivid presence lifts us out of ourselves and so lifts our
weariness.
This book is meant to help us answer Jesus’ invitation.
He implores us to come and learn from him. So we will turn our
attention towards Jesus as we consider a series of stories
from the gospels. We will consider accounts of how Jesus came
to people in every situation of life with his gentle, humble
heart continually offering his gracious love. And we will look
at significant events from Jesus’ own life to see how
even in his suffering he gave himself to us. In each case, we
will try to make the connection between the people of Jesus’
day and our lives now. I invite you to take on the yoke of
turning towards Jesus through considering these stories with
an expectant heart. “Come to me,” he says. As you
turn the pages in this book, join me in replying, “I’m
here, Lord. Let me learn from you.”
- Prayer
- O Lord, as you name our weariness, we become aware
of how tired we have been carrying the burdens of this
life. As you invite us to come to you, our hearts flicker
with hope that we need no longer live as if it is all on
us. We turn, daring to imagine that you might lift us into
strong, loving arms. Restore us, gracious Jesus, with your
love. Place upon us the yoke that fits, the yoke of living
in step with you. Amen.
To order I Am With You Always, call
1-800-368-0110