As a part-time elementary physical education teacher, I have found that each grade level brings separate and very different challenges. For instance, there are times when I am faced with a gymnasium full of forty-five excited, enthusiastic, yet not quite controllable kindergarteners. My fellow PE instructor and I have likened trying to get all forty-five of them on the same task to what it must be like to have a job herding cats. Just as you think you have them all moving in the same direction, a couple pop out of the ranks and begin to unveil their own plan for the class period.
Does your life ever seem like that? You know, just when you think you have something under control, up comes an unexpected situation, maybe a bill for which you had not budgeted, or an illness that knocked you out for a period of time. As you attempt to corral those cats, a few keep getting away from you.
Take a little quiz and see how easy it is for you to fill in the blanks with current feelings:
* I’m ready to throw in the ______________
* I’m at my wit’s ___________________
* I’m at the end of __________________
* I’m just a bundle of _______________
* My life is falling __________________
It seems like we are all, at times, trying to herd those cats. And just when you think you have it accomplished, someone dumps in more cats!
We need to learn how to experience rest. If all we needed was a physical rest, we could take a nap. If all we needed was an emotional rest, we could take a vacation. But where can we find spiritual rest? How can we obtain relief regarding the deepest issues of life in the deepest areas of our hearts?
Two thousand years ago, Jesus spoke to this very issue. We read this in Matthew 11:28-30.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 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.”
Jesus gives us three commands here.
- “Come to me” – notice He does not say, “Come to church.” Christianity means meeting Christ personally. Getting information about Christ does not make you a Christian. He also does not say that you have to have everything together first. He just says, “Come to me, ALL YOU.”
- “Take my yoke” – meaning take HIS yoke. There is no rest in rules and religion, but only in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Whose yoke have you been under, man’s or Christ’s?
- “Learn from me” – are you willing to learn? Each of us is ignorant, just on different subjects. Learn Christ’s humility and learn from Him that which is important.
One day a man went by to see a farmer who was plowing his field with a team of oxen. The man noticed that one of the animals was seemingly a little bigger than the other so he asked him about it. The response from the farmer was very interesting. He said that the big animal was an older animal that was well trained and the smaller one was a young animal that was new to the yoke. The man went on to inquire as to why he put them together and this is the answer that he got,
“Well, you see, it’s like this. That older ox is the best ox that I have ever had; he knows his way around the field. The reason I put the younger one with him is so the older, more knowledgeable ox could teach him how to plow. If I never put them together the younger one would never learn. By himself the younger ox would pull himself to death, but together he learns to cooperate with and rest in the strength of the older ox.”
If we could just learn that – to “cooperate with and rest in the strength of the older ox.”
Jesus Christ calls to us to come to Him for rest; to allow His strength to pour over us. Won’t you do that today and find true rest?
