On Friday I admitted to being tired and so many of you – on Facebook, in private messages, texts, emails, and comments on the blog – tentatively raised your e-hands and said, “Me, too!”

So I got to thinking… what exactly does it mean to rest in Jesus? If Jesus calls us to rest, what does that look like? It’s one thing to find comfort in an idea, but another thing entirely to embrace a promise so thoroughly that it becomes a fiber of our lives.

This morning my toddler was “getting ready” for church. {OK, if you must know, “getting ready” in his book apparently meant running around the boys’ room in his skivvies using his dress pants and dress shirt as a wild, whirling lassos while whooping loudly.}  Anyway, as he “got ready,” he somehow scraped his little toe on the ladder to the pirate room.  He collapsed on the floor in a heap of dress clothes and tears and cried out for help.

As I approached him, in the mess he was in, I said something like, “Oh, sweet boy! Come here and let me kiss it.” And then I scooped him up and he melted into my arms.  Then I took him to the love seat in my room across the hall and held him and comforted him for a bit.  Somewhere in there he got a band-aid and some triple-antibiotic ointment in addition to the kiss. Then he was ready to actually “get ready.”  The funny thing is, when he got ready the way I intended him to get ready, he didn’t get hurt.

I kind of think Jesus calling us to “Come” is a little like this morning in the boys’ room.

I  head off to “obey” whatever I’m called to do and end up exhausting myself by running around with all kinds of things whirling in the air above my head – school schedules, discipline issues, committees, blogs, cheerleading practice, basketball practice, injured knees, running with teens, intentionality in my marriage, the busyness of ministry life, house cleaning, laundry, meal planning and preparing….

Then, when I have gotten myself into a tangled mess, Jesus comes and says, “Oh! Sweet child. Come here and let me give you my rest.” Matthew 11:28 is Him, Jesus – fully God and fully man – standing physically in the presence of real-live human beings, having come to earth and taken on flesh, saying “Come.” And even as he said, “Come” he was already here. He was already acting to bring us to him. Then, in the middle of our mess, he scoops up our hearts and takes us to the throne of love across the great divide of sin, and settles our spirits until we are ready to do his will his way.

And the funny thing is, when I follow his calling the way he intends me to follow him, I don’t get hurt. And I don’t get nearly as tired.

So maybe it’s time to hang up my lasso. What about you?

What are you whirling above your head in a misguided attempt to follow his calling on your life?  Are you forfeiting his rest by taking up the things he’s given you to do his will and flinging them around as if they were meant to be your joy?  As if they were an end in themselves?  Chances are, if you are like me, you have taken those things into your own hands and constructed a yoke that has worn you out.

So, maybe it’s time we all hang up our lassos and take up his yoke.

Maybe it’s time to rest.