“Come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Come away by yourself and rest awhile,
For you are weary of the toil and strain.
Withdraw from the city and all the turmoil,
Fly away like a dove; be with Me in this place.
Find the secret chamber and life, alone with Me,
Peaceful and quiet, where you can be renewed.
Your Father in Heaven watches, He sees;
He is your Home; He makes His abode in you.
chorus:
Come and abide in My presence;
I am your comfort and your peace.
Be healed and receive My acceptance,
Learn from Me; I’m humble and meek.
Take My yoke now, it’s kindly and pleasing;
Enter the life that is all yours to trod.
Now you have power to fulfill your calling,
For alongside your every step is your God.
C.A. TAYLOR
Abide in My Presence
If we examine the four Gospels honestly, we cannot but see that the one thing Christ preached was Himself. He presented no ready-made system of religious truth. He simply said: ‘Come unto Me’ : ‘learn of Me’ : ‘follow Me’ : ‘love Me’ : ‘obey Me’ : ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ : ‘I am the true Vine’ : ‘I am the Bread that came down from heaven’ : ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ One thing is sure⎯that Christ conceived Truth, Morality, Religion as all contained in His own personality, and in our personal relation to Himself.
The world is always full of tired men and women whose steps have lost all spring, and the days of the Nazarene were no exception. The souls that gathered about Him numbered a great many weary ones. He looked upon them, and saw their weariness, and was moved with infinite compassion, and thus appealed to them: ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ ‘I will give.’ How? We remember that other great word He spoke on another day: ‘Not as the world giveth, give I.’ How does the world give? If the world wished to help a heavy-laden man, it would seek to do it by removing his burden. The world’s way of giving rest is by removing a man’s yoke. Its gift of rest would be a gift of ease. ‘Not as the world giveth, give I.’ That is not His way. The restful life is not the easeful life⎯life without burdens or yokes. The gift of Jesus is a gift of rest while wearing the yoke.
But Christ’s picture of rest is still more puzzlingly unfamiliar. You have watched a man ploughing, with the clean, fresh earth upturning…and he himself with steady eyes fixed on the goal, and arms, all taut muscle standing out like a whipcord, gripping the shafts, and the patient horses, with their beautiful, glossy skins, shiny with perspiration, straining and heaving as the share slowly rips the stubborn soil⎯and all this up and down, and down and up, unendingly the whole long, tiring day. Translate all that into the local color of the East, the glare of the pitiless sun, the dust-storms blowing past, the merciless heat, the steaming creatures pulling, pulling⎯up and down, and down and up⎯it is a perfect picture not of rest surely, but of toil. And that is what Christ offers! To be spiritually minded, says Christ, to have poise and balance of soul, one does not need to shrink out of the jostle and press of life into some sheltered nook. Up and down, and down and up, in the pitiless sun: and even there one can keep cool in soul!
‘Take My yoke.’ The yoke Christ invites us to take is a double yoke. If we bear one half of it, He Himself bears the other. He helps us to pull the load and bear the burden. “If you will let Me,” He says, “I will come in and share with you, and add My strength to yours, and pull along with you. If there is any grace, and any power, you can rely on them as yours, and draw on them up to the last limit of everything I have, and everything I am, and all that I can do.”
JAMES HASTINGS
The Speaker’s Bible -Matthew
