Come to me all who are weary

Every year I choose a word of the year rather than setting a resolution for myself. This word of the year is chosen based on discernment and prompting from the Holy Spirit, not some random word generator, and over the past six years of following this habit, it has been incredibly accurate for my journey each of those years.

This year, my word is rest. And let me tell you, it is definitely signifying a growth I did not expect. With a word like rest, I thought I'd be leaning in to slowing down, learning how to be still, to not be so busy.

What I didn't expect, was to be learning how to work.

We might be tempted to think of rest as idleness. The kind of self care we imagine nowadays with a bubble bath, a glass of wine, and a little bit of Netflix bingeing.

But I think, if we are modelling our motherhood after the home of Nazareth, we need to understand that rest might mean something different, altogether.

Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11: 28-30

I think we are all pretty familiar with the first section of this verse. We are exhorted to bring what we are heavy laden with to the Good Shepherd and He promises to give us rest. But in the next breath He is telling us to take a yoke upon us. Imagine with me for a moment, an oxen fitted with a yoke.

Even as a figure of speech, the yoke is seen as an oppressive thing. An animal, or most commonly a pair of animals, fitted with a yoke and harness, are fitted for work. For hard, sweaty, drudging work. How can we associate rest with this idea of a beast of burden fitted for work?

The original plan for work

I think we have to first understand that human beings were always meant to work. Work is not a curse, it is a blessing.

The Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it. and keep it. Genesis 2:15

God made man. He then created a beautiful world for him to enjoy, taking care to fill it with beauty and pleasure and all good things for man to benefit from. But God did not just set Adam in the garden as in a leisure play ground for man to live in idleness and ease. God put man in this paradise in order to work.

Then God created Eve as an especial gift, a complement to Adam's masculinity, as a helper, as one made to work alongside Adam. The the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him." Genesis 2: 18 "God's intention in creating the woman for the man was for the two to be partners in the many tasks involved in stewarding God's creation." (https://www.theologyofwork.org/key-topics/women-and-work-in-the-old-testament/god-created-woman-as-an-ezer-kind-of-helper-genesis-218)

After the fall, when you read the punishment of Adam in Genesis 3:17-19, it may seem that the penalty is the work itself: cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

The difference between the work that Adam and Eve did before the Fall, as opposed to after the Fall, is found in the word toil, which according to the Oxford Dictionary means to work extremely hard or incessantly.

As Matthew Henry writes in his commentary on this scripture: His business, before he sinned, was a constant pleasure to him; but now his labour shall be a weariness. (https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/matthew-henry/Gen.3.17-Gen.3.19) Adam's punishment was that doing the work that was necessary in order for him to live, the work he was made to do and which had once brought great joy and meaning to his life, was now a burden, a hardship, a weariness.

It doesn't end there

But the story about work, about our purpose - ultimately how we fulfill the Will of the Father, does not end here.

Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest

So here we come to Him with this idea that our work is laborious, it is drudgery, it is a burden. Here He says to us, bring it to me, I will give you rest. Not from work, but from our relationship to work that came into humanity through sin. From our working without direction, without vision.

Rest is giving up this sinful disassociation with purpose so that He can place His yoke upon us, not so that we can toil in our sin, but so

that we can learn from Him. Like the oxen fitted with the yoke for work, their efforts are directed, made more effective, by the guiding hand of the farmer on the reins, our work is directed and made more effective when we are being guided by the hand of the Divine Farmer on the reins of our lives.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Hebrews 13;20-21

Blessings this Advent season,

Olivia