Devotion 333 rest

“Come to me ….and I will give you rest."  Matthew 11:28

How often I have read this scripture.  How often I have claimed its last five words and relished the thought of sweet rest.

Rest...

It seems a precious and rare commodity and I in my typical wearied state have limited its meaning to sleep.

I am learning ever so slowly that rest is truly a much bigger, more meaningful word.  It is truly a reward for those who choose to draw closer to Him.

We were going away for a bit of rest.  In truth, I find the preparations for the six of us anything but restful.  There are my endless lists.  There is the buttoning of all things business and the zipping of all things at home.

Then we whisk away and I attempt to squeeze every ounce of joy out of every single moment, leaving a precious few moments for rest.

I measured our time as successful.  We played well, we ate well, and we seemed to sleep very well.

But then, in the very last moments of our trip, we met a new friend who toured us through the gardens of an extraordinary artist.  I had read about the gardens, the artist; I had studied his life and his work.

Yet our new friend described the artist in an almost intimate way.  He had studied a great deal more than I.   The artist had experienced great sadness.  He had lost the love and life of two wives and a child plunging him into a deep depression.  Yet, the artist managed to endeavor a garden of magnificent proportions that would inspire his life’s work for five decades.

He came to a place in those gardens where he could find rest.

Perhaps rest is not made of pillows and sleeping pills but arriving at a place where our minds and our spirits can rest. 

We must come to the fountain of life and to the well of peace. 

In our great busy, restless lives we confuse the hunger for physical rest with the thirst for spiritual respite.

 

It is the pursuit of the Holy in a sea of the unholy.

It is the seeing of light amidst a desert of dark.

It is the finding of God’s blessings amidst the cloak of the common.

We have the indescribable choice to come and rest or attempt the resting with the beautiful garden of grace.

Come to Him Beloved, He bids us welcome and sweet rest.