Mental Construction Crews & Being Sick

To my readers,

I hate being sick.

When you’re sick, you're not supposed to do anything but rest.  Having to stay home and rest is one of the hardest things for me. I’m a work-a-holic and a perfectionist.  I work until I cannot work anymore. When I’m sick, I feel as though I haven’t accomplished anything, I am physically weak, and I just look/feel horrible.

After accepting that I was sick, I stayed home from work.  Then after trying to sleep, watching too many episodes of Psych, and listening to my head pound, I’ve found that there is nothing I wanted more than rest. The sad part is, it was the only thing I couldn’t have.

Every time I moved my body ached. Every time I tried to think, the construction workers in my head got louder.  I was tired, exhausted, and weary. 

I needed rest.

There is an account of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew where he says this:

If we were all honest, we all feel this way at one point or another.  Life starts to beat us down and begins to wear us out.  There are days we wake up with our body aching and we still have a full day’s work and errands to do. We are sore from all the toil we daily endure. We feel burdened. 

There are other days where we don’t believe God is with us. We feel as though he isn’t speaking because we can’t hear him. We look everywhere else in the world hoping to find an answer, but we end up where we started. It causes us to feel so alone and overwhelmed that we want to scream just so that someone might hear us crying out for help.  We feel as though we are completely abandoned. We feel weary.

I think if we were honest, we would find we are weary.  We’re burdened. 

And we need rest.

Jesus extends his offer to everyone who is weary and burdened.  He offers all of us to gather around him and it is here that things change. It’s here with Jesus that we find hope.  It’s here we can drop all of our burdens. It’s here with Jesus that we find rest.

There is no other place because only Jesus can give us this rest.

What are you carrying that is weighing you down?  What battles are you fighting that leave you exhausted? Drop it at the foot of the cross.  Seek his rest as you seek it when you are sick and are in desperate need of rest. Set aside your pride, your strength, your insecurities, and everything that is holding you back from Jesus.  

None of those things matter to him.

Only you do. He proved this by dying on a cross for our sins and rising again to show his love for us is greater than death.

Its in that same love we can find rest.

When was the last time you did nothing but rest in Jesus’ presence? He is waiting to give you rest within his embrace.  Go to him, all of you- it’s the only place we can lose ourselves and find rest.

Simply,

Tex G.M. Rule

"Then Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28, NLT.