"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." We are to live faith actively, a faith that permeates every aspect of our lives. Jesus continues to discuss those traits we are to necessarily integrate into our lives.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
We are to live faith actively, a faith that permeates every aspect of our lives.
Jesus continues to discuss those traits we are to necessarily integrate into our lives.
He begins today by praising His Heavenly Father Who provides us, His little ones with knowledge of Himself. Jesus reveals the Father to us, and He calls us, to again, actively live in relationship with Him.
St. Paul in writing to the Church at Rome, as he usually does, talks about the practicalities of active faith. He reminds us that our life is in Christ Jesus. That means we live differently from the worldly. We do the real things that mark our lives as Christians.
What are those things? Daily prayer, Sunday worship, reading that bible – and if you don’t want to get it off the bookshelf, well there’s an app for that.
Those things are a start, but there is more – it is in the way we live as a community and family of faith and how we make that faith real to all those around us – through our service and work with real people, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, just being there as a friend.
If we do that, we are taking up Jesus’ yoke, we are learning from Him – and we will find that actively lived faith makes our lives better. Our burdens are lessened; we find true rest.
St. Paul goes on to show us the alternative, the choice we have. The choice is to live worldly lives in the flesh. That for us is the struggle.
As we sit at home, drive, work, study, we can say, I am doing this for me. I am doing all I can to maximize my enjoyment and pursue all that non-stop. In doing so we tend to set God aside, put our faithful living in a box, make God something for later – and soon later becomes never. The irony is real rest never comes.
Let us then actively live every day in God and find true peace and rest.
