Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
I have a sign on my bulletin board that says, "God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I think I will never die!" The cartoon character is a boy with a big scowl on his face. As I keep having setbacks in my physical health, I continually get further and further behind. At this rate I'll live past a hundred years old!
Do you ever feel like this? Are you weary and tired, feeling like you are spinning your wheels? Jesus says to come to him and he will give you rest.
The funny thing about this is that when I feel well, I am so busy running around trying to get stuff done that I don't take the time to rest. In fact, I find that I often neglect to sit down and take the time I should just reading God's and spending time with Jesus as I should. So then comes the bad days when I don't have the energy to do much or my foot hurts and I have to sit with ice on it.
Today the Lord impressed upon my heart the meaning of the word rest in this verse. The Greek meaning is
1) to cause or permit one to cease from any movement or labor in order to recover and collect his strength
2) to give rest, refresh, to give one's self rest, take rest
3) to keep quiet, of calm and patient expectation
Could it be that the Lord allows me to have the bad days in order to cause me to cease from movement or labor in order to recover and collect my spiritual strength?
Could it be that through these times He wants me to keep quiet, be calm and wait in patient expectation for Him as He works in my circumstances?
My tendency when things are not going well, is to get frustrated and to labor and toil under the weight of it all through worry and irritation at the circumstances. But I am beginning to understand that He wants me to see these times as times of spiritual refreshment when I must sit down (or lay down as the case may be) and rest rather than sit, soak and sour with irritation over it.
Psalm 23:2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Yes, the bad days can really be green pastures and still waters. It's all a matter of whether we will let the Shepherd make us lie down and rest or if we choose to be standing up in our hearts in irritation because we'd rather be doing something else.
Marsha 2004