Returning and Rest

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. -Matthew 11:29

I find it hard to believe that it is coming up on the Fourth of July weekend! Wasn’t it just yesterday we were celebrating New Year’s Day? At the same time it feels like it was at least 10 or 20 years ago that the pandemic started in March. These are stressful times. While stressful times rush by us like a hurricane wind they also seem to adopt a dragging, forever quality at the same time.

It was easy to imagine that the cornona virus would be just a few weeks of inconvenience at first. Now we are recognizing that the pandemic is changing us and just about everything about the way we conduct our lives. It is changing our economy, our gatherings, our relationships, our politics, our travel, our work, our leisure, our view of the future. It has also both figuratively and literally taken away friends and loved ones.

We’ve all been doing extremely difficult emotional work for the past three months, while some people in our communities have also been doing extra hard and even dangerous physical work, too. People have taken on new learning curves with homeschooling, telecommuting, and online communications like zoom. Many have become unemployed, ill or isolated. Depression, anxiety and stress-related illnesses are spiking as our familiar routines fall apart. And while all this is going on our usual supports were kicked out from under us. No gathering with friends or family. No going out on the town. No community events, no arts or sports gatherings. No in-person church. Though some businesses are now opening and we’re beginning to venture forth tentatively, the specter of a resurgence of the virus hangs over our heads and screams out its presence from the pages of the newspaper.

Adapting to so much continual and challenging change is very stressful and very hard, and the grief we feel is real. I suspect I’m not the only one who will not be able to gather and celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with the usual people in our usual way. And each time reminders like this come up - reminders of how much things have changed - the wound of our stressful times is made fresh all over again. Each time we have to work to come back to some semblance of center in order to move forward. Yes, it has been hard emotional work for us all.

Our faith will be tested by times like these. We will feel like the ancient Israelites wandering around in the desert, betrayed by our leaders, betrayed by God. We will feel like the disciples in the Gospel of Mark, constantly tripping up and falling down and failing to understand Christ’s message. But for generations, Jesus has invited people who feel harrassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, to lay our burdens down. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.”

Life will always include hard work, emotional and otherwise. It will always entail the wearing of some yoke and the carrrying of many burdens. But in Christ, we can know that we are never alone in bearing them, and that in him we can find true rest. I pray that as we continue to make the many unwelcome adjustments these stressful times require, we will keep our trust in Christ at the center of all we do.

I am grateful to be heading off for some rest over the next three weeks and four Sundays. I ask your prayers that I will come back rejuvenated and ready to take up the rector’s yoke afresh again. Though I will be away, you all will remain in my daily prayers. Let us pray together that despite our deep weariness from the many changes and chances of this life, we can find rest in God’s eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord,

This Sunday’s readings are HERE. Ordinary time offers many readings to contemplate each Sunday. Track 1 will lead you through certain Old Testament books week by week more in depth. Track 2 provides an Old Testament text that is meant to compliment the Gospel of the week.