Five-Minute Friday: Rest

I walk with him yesterday, fingers turning red in the evening air, and I talk the entire time, it seems.  Of all the things that press and claw and cling, and how I want to throw them off and rest.  My stride slows as I realize this, my feet trudging beneath the weight of it all.  

"Jesus, I need to rest awhile.  I'm exhausted, weary of grief..and it's made me wary of you."

I let the words roll of my chest, because he already knows.

"I know you said life won't be easy, but I also read we wouldn't be crushed.  I want to believe that."

Those words dripping with promise, a drink in the wilderness, emerge from my heart: "Come to me, all who labor 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."

I can't separate those words of promise from something else he said about seeking him and his ways above everything else, and all the things that we tend to worry about - our clothes and food and where we'll live - he'll take care of them.  Because he takes care to clothe the flowers in beauty with his eye on the sparrow, and aren't we of immeasurable more value than those?  All these things; all the rest.  That's what he promises to watch over.

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And I think of the red breasted robins I've been admiring on the front lawn as we drive up the hill to home, and I thank him for them. 

It's not easy, to come to him and find rest, if we're carrying around the weight of the rest.  

Maybe, most of the time, rest depends on how much we are willing to let go of all the rest, outcome uncertain, and walk with him in the cool of the evening.

Linking up at Lisa Jo's place for another Five-Minute Friday post, this week on "rest."