Matthew 11:28-30 states “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.”
Wow, what a promise! Who would not want to have an easy yoke and a light burden? I have always imagined that I would like to trade my burdens and take on a more improved stack. I wanted that easy, light load...the one everyone else seemed to have.
I was out of town for 4 days recently. Upon returning, I was facing a giant pile of work. I was weary and burdened. I wanted to rest, write on my blog, eat stuff, and relax. But that was impossible. I even had to miss the Super Bowl party because I had about 6 hours of school work to complete. Life did not seem fair. Seemed that every else had that "light" load and I had to walk around with a heavy load.
However, I was talking to Luke and he brought new insight to this familiar passage. I wanted these verses to mean something else. I left out the middle, and most important, part of the passage. Jesus did indeed invite me to take his yoke upon me. But I conveniently skipped that part about learning from him. What did he ask me to learn? Jesus asked me to be gentle and humble in heart and then I would find rest for my soul.
That cast an entirely different light on the verse. Learn from Jesus. When I am gentle and humble in heart, I will find rest for my soul. He did not take long naps because he was worn out, demand his "rights," claim what he thought he "deserved," strive to be understood, envy the rich guy, want a better mission in life, or even get mad when we did not know how important he was. He was totally quiet when accused. He was absolutely submissive to his father. He gave up riches and glory and came to live among us to show us The Way, not a Way. He is everything I am not. He is gently asking me to learn from Him.
