“Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” -Matthew 11:28-30 (KJV).
Yesterday’s devotional urged the importance of memorizing scriptures. For the next several days, I will share with you verses I memorized along the way in my Christian journey, and some of the meaningful highlights the verses hold for me.
I will give the Scripture in the King James Version of the Bible, since most of the verses I’ve memorized, even recently, are in that lofty and sacred text. By way of information, I checked Rev. Robert J. Morgan’s list of 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart and these from Matthew 11 he did not cite. But I like them, perhaps because of my having grown up on a farm. The work we had to do was very hard with little time to rest from labors. I was attracted to Christ’s invitation to rest and the metaphor of the yoke, which was a familiar method of linking our farm mules to plows, wagon, or even to the lever that turned my father’s sorghum syrup mill for six weeks of very hard labor in the fall when he made syrup from our crop of cane and that of many other farmers in our vicinity. What an invitation: to be yoked with Christ the Lord in whatever work lay ahead for me in my life. It was an awesome and striking thought…and remains so until this day.
“Come unto Me…I will give you rest”: An invitation and a promise. Jesus recognizes our need for rest, that we are sometimes burdened, heavy-laden, maybe even over-worked and overstressed. He invites us to a time apart with Him. And refreshment, renewal and revitalization are the results. On the farm we knew not to unequally yoke work animals together in a task. We did not yoke a strong, large horse with a smaller, weaker mule, nor a mule with an oxen.
But how, then, can one such as I, with human frailties and failures, be yoked with Christ the Lord? Is not that “unequal” yoking? Yes, as we evaluate and interpret His majesty and power in comparison to our own inadequacy and imperfection. But the secret lies in coming to Him first. He has the power to make us joint heirs of all the Father has in store for each of us. “My yoke is easy, my burden is light” Jesus promises. A scholarly explanation of the “easy yoke” Christ puts upon us as we work with Him can be translated “a well-fitting yoke”—one that never chafes nor irritates but that fits us for the task at hand. Our association with Christ has all the benefits of a genuine, cooperative, productive work relationship. He yearns for what is best for ours and others’ good. Someone has aptly stated that God does not fear the future, for He is already there. And our partnership, yoked up with Jesus, is sure to produce desired results that will please the Father and bring glory to Him. Added benefits to us are the serenity and rest of soul, the genuine pleasure of tasks well done, and then rest and restoration, so that together, with Christ, we can be ready for His next assignment.
Yesterday’s devotional urged the importance of memorizing scriptures. For the next several days, I will share with you verses I memorized along the way in my Christian journey, and some of the meaningful highlights the verses hold for me.
I will give the Scripture in the King James Version of the Bible, since most of the verses I’ve memorized, even recently, are in that lofty and sacred text. By way of information, I checked Rev. Robert J. Morgan’s list of 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart and these from Matthew 11 he did not cite. But I like them, perhaps because of my having grown up on a farm. The work we had to do was very hard with little time to rest from labors. I was attracted to Christ’s invitation to rest and the metaphor of the yoke, which was a familiar method of linking our farm mules to plows, wagon, or even to the lever that turned my father’s sorghum syrup mill for six weeks of very hard labor in the fall when he made syrup from our crop of cane and that of many other farmers in our vicinity. What an invitation: to be yoked with Christ the Lord in whatever work lay ahead for me in my life. It was an awesome and striking thought…and remains so until this day.
“Come unto Me…I will give you rest”: An invitation and a promise. Jesus recognizes our need for rest, that we are sometimes burdened, heavy-laden, maybe even over-worked and overstressed. He invites us to a time apart with Him. And refreshment, renewal and revitalization are the results. On the farm we knew not to unequally yoke work animals together in a task. We did not yoke a strong, large horse with a smaller, weaker mule, nor a mule with an oxen.
But how, then, can one such as I, with human frailties and failures, be yoked with Christ the Lord? Is not that “unequal” yoking? Yes, as we evaluate and interpret His majesty and power in comparison to our own inadequacy and imperfection. But the secret lies in coming to Him first. He has the power to make us joint heirs of all the Father has in store for each of us. “My yoke is easy, my burden is light” Jesus promises. A scholarly explanation of the “easy yoke” Christ puts upon us as we work with Him can be translated “a well-fitting yoke”—one that never chafes nor irritates but that fits us for the task at hand. Our association with Christ has all the benefits of a genuine, cooperative, productive work relationship. He yearns for what is best for ours and others’ good. Someone has aptly stated that God does not fear the future, for He is already there. And our partnership, yoked up with Jesus, is sure to produce desired results that will please the Father and bring glory to Him. Added benefits to us are the serenity and rest of soul, the genuine pleasure of tasks well done, and then rest and restoration, so that together, with Christ, we can be ready for His next assignment.
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