Rest your weary soul
“Do your work for six days but rest on the seventh day so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female slave as well as the foreign resident may be refreshed.” Exodus 23:12
How much does Yahweh love us? So much that He specifically set aside one day every week so that we could rest and “be refreshed.” He created us in His image, after all, and He rested on the Seventh Day. It only makes sense that His divine design is that we are created to rest.
But what happens when we can’t find that day of rest?
One of the aspects of being an Army spouse living through a deployment is learning how to do “it all” solo. Literally, “it all.” All the house. All the kids. All the bills. All the “keeping family up to date.” All the community involvement.
There’s not a lot of time for rest.
One night I was laying in bed after days of non-stop activity and facing more to come, my body aching from hours upon hours of constant motion, my “day of rest” too many days away. My spirit cried out to God, “How on earth will I keep going?”
Then, in a clear answer to prayer, I remembered a lesson I heard once about how Jesus is our Sabbath, our perfect Sabbath rest. Hebrews 3-4 tells us that the true Sabbath, true rest and restoration, is found in Jesus. “For we who have believed enter the rest…a Sabbath rest remains, therefore, for God’s people.”
I have access to the Sabbath rest at all times because I have access to Jesus at all times. As that truth presented itself anew to me, I prayed that Jesus would share with me an extra portion of that rest to prepare me for the days ahead.
That night, God blessed me with the best night of sleep I’d had in weeks, and a peaceful calm and focus the next day.
What a comfort to know that our Heavenly Father loves us enough to provide His promised rest not only in eternity, but in this life as well.
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28