Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. – Matthew 11:29 NLT

At the end of a long day of the demands of daily life, we crave rest. Our bodies need it and our minds need it just the same. If we don’t have some form of rest we get burnt out, sick, and short-tempered. God knows we need this rest in order to function properly and bring our best into each day for everyone we come in to contact with.

But sadly, we don’t always get the rest we need. Our sleep is interrupted with tossing and turning with cares and worries of the day. Our diets are less than optimal when we overly caffeinate and give in to sugar cravings just to keep going. Our minds are stressed from the moment we rise with the blaring alarm clock, through the busy day, and into the evening when traffic is at an all-time high as we try to make it home. Rest sounds like a nice idea, but the reality is, when we try to change our ways to get it, the world tells us we need to “hustle” and “make things happen”. So, we press on until we are utter shells of ourselves, and have no idea how to attain real and lasting change that allows for rest as well as accomplishing everything we have on our plates.

Enter Jesus.

The ultimate “Boss” is telling us to rest, to come to Him, to take His yoke upon us, to learn from Him. He isn’t telling us to work until we can’t keep our eyes open, He isn’t saying to us that we need to constantly measure up. We are putting those burdens on ourselves, thinking that if we don’t “go, go, go” we will get left behind. But again, He says “let me teach you,” so let’s look to Him as our example.

Jesus often went to be alone with God to pray, to recharge His batteries if you will. He knew that He needed to take this time, alone with God, away from the crowds and the noise. And that is exactly what God does for us, He equips us with the ability to find rest in Him and reset our minds in order to carry on. Without these times of rest with Him, it won’t take much to be crushed under the weight of all we try to carry alone.

So let’s learn from Him, learn from Jesus’ example of time away with God to readjust our focus and find the rest we so desperately need. And when we have renewed our strength by being with Him, let’s be sure to invite Him along with us throughout the remainder of our day.