Second Wednesday of Advent - December 12, 2018

The Weariness of Misplaced Trust

Isaiah 40:25-31
Matthew 11:28-30


Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. (Isa. 40:28-31)


“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.” (Matt. 11:28-30)


In Isaiah's time, the hope for a savior was tied to political systems and empires. The people waited for God to raise up another king like David. Of course, governments and political systems have no power to "save"; rather, they seem to specialize in self-interest and in burdening their citizens. It is that very weariness to which Isaiah spoke, the assurance that God does not grow faint or weary . . . that those who hope in God's present and future will renew their strength, soar like eagles, not grow weary or faint.

Of course, Isaiah's day was not alone in trusting political or governmental solutions for complex human need. A vast part of the U.S. electorate voted in 2016 hoping their candidate would usher America back to some elusive past greatness, seeking political solutions to myriad social issues. And this approach was largely supported by huge coalitions of Christians who claim to trust God alone for salvation.

In the years since 2016, another segment of the electorate has sought to use political means to restore order to a chaotic government, believing that well-being will come through more elections and appointments.

Though political means represent the way our current system is set up, both groups are delusional, especially those who advocate that one party or the other holds the keys to happiness and well-being. Trusting political systems to grant even a semblance of salvation is idolatry, and idolatry held so closely is burdensome.

The Advent texts today invite us to take up another way, to yoke ourselves to Christ, to turn from frantic anxiety and weariness to One whose yoke is easy and burden is light.

This is how The Message says it:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matt. 11:28-30, The Message)


For Reflection:

Sit with Matthew 11:28-30 in The Message. Let it speak to you. What do you hear? What invitations from Jesus stir your heart?

For Those Weary of Planning for and Talking about Christmas

"I'm tired of planning for and talking about Christmas. I just want some space to sit with it, apart from the many self-imposed distractions and tugs that scatter my attention."

I said these words last week to some friends as we talked about our experience of Advent and Christmas. I've been planning Advent and Christmas services since early November. I've been talking about Christmas, both in writing and in speech for almost that long. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of talking about the concept and planning for the experience. It feels blasphemous that I should want something to be ended before it has even arrived -- especially something so "holy" as Christmas. Yet, that is the honest truth about my interior state.

And I feel this way not only about the planning that is part of my daily work. My personal planning for Christmas is nearly shot, also. Day after day I'm haunted by inner voices that whisper, "But what are you going to buy so-and-so? . . . and what about a gift for what's-her-name? . . ." Shadowy voices rumble around within me, voices of compulsion and drivenness. Some years my gift-giving is divinely inspired -- the year I gave my golfing friends Titleist golf balls inscribed with, "MEDITATE THIS, THOMAS MERTON!" -- but not so this year. It's been a grinding chore. I'm about to give in, now one week before Christmas, go to Amazon.com, and hit the "BUY!" button: "Squatty Potties for everyone!!" I'd have them in hand for distribution by December 22.

One of my friends, to whom I vented about my weariness over Christmas talk and planning, asked a helpful clarifying question: "If you were able just to sit with the season, what would you find?"

I don't know what I'd find. I believe there would be much less compulsion and drivenness crowding the soul-space. Maybe there would be simple openness, even emptiness. As it is, I sit each morning in my mauve rocker with the worn armrests, reading Advent and Christmas texts, waiting for something to come at me . . . waiting to hear . . . waiting to catch a glimpse. Little seems to move toward me. It's mostly just sitting in a space in which precious little seems to be going on . . . except the compulsiveness, the self-guilt over my sad gift-giving, and the weariness that accompanies those voices.

In fact, I feels something like a kind of "virgin" through the season, as the Virgin Mary entered her own experience in emptiness and simple openness. (I have more thoughts on the "virginity" to which the season invites us . . . I may share them in this space in a few days.)

To be sure, I look at my calendar and see services, events, gatherings, where I am compelled to have something to say about Christmas . . . and I will gladly step into those places . . . after all, I'd hate to waste all this great planning and strategizing of the last two months.

But mostly, I'm longing for no thinking, no words, no strategizing, no talking about. Instead, simply a sitting-in. A being-with.

And IF you find a Squatty Potty under your Christmas tree . . .

What Rest?

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28)

I was particularly sensitive to Jesus' words in Matthew 11:28 when I read them a couple of days ago. They caught my attention on the long end of a stretch in which I've dealt with health issues that brought several weeks of lean sleep.

Ahhh, but to be able to sleep again. Rest, sweet rest.

In my naivete', I've supposed that this was the rest Jesus promises. Rest. Sleep. A pause from the demands of work. Respite from the constant houndings of daily life. A moment free from "forced" creativity. Eight hours of non-interrupted REM sleep.

But when I read the passage this time, I asked some other questions of this rest.

What is the rest Jesus gives? Is is rest from physical exhaustion? Is it emotional rest? Is it rest from carrying the burdens others place upon me? Is it rest from health concerns?

And I began to consider other kinds of rest . . . rest from trying to control everyone else around me . . . rest from being attached to outcomes . . . rest from worry about things I cannot control . . . and rest from the control I try to exert over the way things turn out, that they should look the way I want them to look. . . .

Is it rest from my compulsions?
Is it rest from my attachment to security?
Is it rest from my attachment to good health?
Is it rest from my attachment to comfort?

I realize that so much anxiety and worry comes when any of these things are thwarted, when my attachment to them is threatened. Truly, the anxiety and worry represent "no rest", no sense of well-being. They are wearisome, draining, exhausting, pulling out my interior resources, spending energy on that over which I usually have little control.

For this season of my life, I sense that rest is not getting plenty of sleep. As always, I reserve the right to change my mind about these things . . . but for today, rest looks more like letting go of compulsions and releasing attachments.

My experience has been that only in the context of a vertical, Divine-human, I-Thou relationship, do I recognize these compulsions and attachments. The contemplative journey gives me the space to see myself more and more clearly, to see what is more true about myself, and to name the compulsions and attachments which are illusory.

Further, it gives me some language -- even if limited -- to speak to these compulsions and attachments. And it gives me some practices that are well-suited for breaking up the hardened soil of the attachments in order that I might live more freely for good and healing in the world.

Jesus, it would seem to me, is much more invested in this kind of liberating rest that heals me and heals the world than in my prospects for getting a good, eight hour sleep.

The Second Wednesday of Advent -- December 8, 2010

Matthew 11:28 - 30

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”


When I first started fasting years ago as a spiritual practice, I found it strange that I so often became irritable when I went without food for a period of time. I was at a beginning place in my own spiritual awareness, and assumed that a spiritual discipline would yield results that looked pious. I thought fasting would give me a holy aura, that the road to such holiness would be filled with bliss.

What I found instead was that being hungry for long periods of time really ticked me off. Junk hidden deep within me would rise to the surface. Little things would set me off.

I soon noticed that not only did my disposition and behavior change when I was hungry, but the same dispositions and behaviors rose up within me when I was overly angry, and when I was lonely, and when I was tired. In the early 1990's I was telling a friend about this self-discovery, about what I'd seen in my growing self-awareness. He had been involved in a 12-step program for a few years, and immediately said, "Yeah, that's H.A.L.T.: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Those are the times when you're most vulnerable."

I know now that addicts -- all of us, in other words -- are most vulnerable in those four states of being.

As I get older, it seems like I experience "Tired" more than the other three. In my younger years, I found sleep to be a waste of time, a bad use of the short span of time we have to live on the planet. Now that I'm older, naps are precious, and days given to sleeping a little later in the morning are absolute gifts from God!

I experience "Tired" in different ways. There are times when my body is worn out from being physical taxed. When possible, those times call for a nap, or for a late morning of sleep.

There are times when I'm emotionally and physically weary from medical procedures and treatments. I rest when I can and try to come into some equilibrium.

In some life-situations I simply run out of energy. There are times when I've dealt with some situation all I can, when I've given a person, a relationship or a task all the energy I can muster. I simply get tired underneath it.

The most consistently wearying times for me, though, come when I'm running so fast or at such a pace, that I have nothing left in my tank. The hours and days when I lunge from event to event, when I'm in a mode of constantly preparing for the "next big thing," I feel like I have little inner reservoir from which to draw. My resources are low. When I'm spiritually, emotionally and physically depleted, I'm vulnerable.

The rest Jesus promised is "rest for your souls." It may or may not include physical rest (most often it does . . . we are whole persons, not fragmented into various pieces).

This rest comes from being rooted in the Source of all life. Rest also comes when we live into different life-patterns or rhythms. Weariness comes when we get jerked around by the oughts and shoulds that find us in the external world. We lose our center. We capitulate to expectation and demand without a sense of who we truly are and why God created us.

Personally, I believe a lot of our running about in madness is the result of our not knowing our true name, the name that most deeply connects us to God and gives us our truest identity.

But different rhythms mean that we move easily between silence, solitude and engagement. It means that we simplify our lives. It means that we are clear with ourselves about the difference between what we need and what we want. We find both the inner freedom to say, "Yes," and the inner freedom to say, "No."

During Advent, both John the Baptist and the Prophet Isaiah have encouraged us to level valleys and mountains, to make curved paths straight. In other words, they've encouraged us to balance, to the middle, to the path that is steady and reliable.

It is the path that we walk when we live from the inside-out. The person consistently on the move, running from task to obligation, will have little sense of Jesus' words.

"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."