AN ANTIDOTE TO WEARINESS
Being weary, tired and burdened is not alien to any person’s experience. Life’s not easy when there are jobs to be done, deadlines to be kept and bills to pay. People you work with and live with can drain you of all energy. Struggles, disease and sufferings in various forms that come your way can leave you with very little energy left. Being weary is a way of life.
Is there an antidote to weariness? It is only too evident that every man needs to rest daily. The mental and physical rest that sleep brings refreshes a person each day. Sleep deprivation can lead to stress and disease apart from decreasing your productivity significantly. All men understand that sleep is essential to our very existence. In fact there is a medical condition called fatal familial insomnia, which is a genetic condition that prevents a person from attaining deep sleep. Rapid deterioration follows and the person dies a few months after the onset of symptoms.
As readily as we understand that we have been created with a sleep-wake cycle, we also understand that God has set apart a day of rest for man. This day originally observed as the Sabbath on a Saturday, but now universally kept on Sunday is meant to provide man a break from his routines of work and strife. It is to be a time of rejuvenation wherein he can take a break from the stressors he faces everyday providing an opportunity for relief from weariness. Filling that day with activities that help to relax can recharge you for the next week. The concept of vacation is also derived from the above. Most people take time off on a regular basis to recharge and rejuvenate.
Now interestingly, despite all these, man stills finds himself weary and burdened. Often people get back from vacation to find themselves so tired that they need another vacation to recover from their original vacation! Despite all you do to amuse yourself and relax, you still find yourself carrying a burden- tired and exhausted deep within. It is as though all that you did only touched you superficially leaving you still yearning for rest deep inside. What can you do when the antidote to weariness itself gets you weary? What do you do when weariness itself shows no signs of getting weary as it clings to you? That is when Jesus’ words become meaningful
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew11)
True rest is found in Christ because he is the fountain of life; in him is the fullness of God and therefore the fullness of life. At the core of man’s existence is his spirit, which needs nourishment. All that we do to rejuvenate ourselves still leaves our spirits empty until we are hooked on to God through Christ. It is then that Christ’s life flows into us, nourishing our parched souls. Being hooked on to God is indeed a yoke that we willingly accept. For those who object to yokes, it is good to realize that no man is truly free. He submits to several yokes imposed by his home, society, workplace and country, without which orderly life would not be possible. But above all these, the one yoke that will truly bring him rest is the yoke of submitting to and following Christ. It is that one yoke, which is most maligned by the secular world, yet the only yoke that is truly easy to take upon and ultimately the only true antidote to weariness.
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