Come to 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

I was woken in the wee hours of the morning by a whisper to my heart. “Come to me.” Try as I might I could not ignore the repeated refrain. “Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.” I slipped from my warm-but-sleepless cocoon, found my chair, and said in a not so poetic voice, ‘I am here. What do you want?’ Not the most grateful of responses. Yet despite my frustration at being called from my bed, my heart truly was stirred within me and within moments I entered into the secret place. Once fully immersed in his presence, the heaviness I did not know I had been carrying was exposed. My weary, heavy-laden heart was laid bare as I sat in the darkness surrounded by his light.

“Come to me.”

How simple is that directive? How utterly easy? And how ridiculous is it that he has to wake me in the night to get me to follow it? And how is it that I did not recognize my heavy heart until this moment? He tells me that I am far too busy in the day to hear him call to me. I know he is right. There is no use arguing when you are in the secret place. It is a beautiful place of exposure and truth, that is as safe as it is deadly. In this place my heart is revealed to me and I SEE. As usual it is not so pretty, but as usual he pours out his grace for the pruning and calls me beautiful. I am so grateful for what his eyes see and what he calls forth. This time he illuminates the words, “learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.” I am thinking that I haven’t seen much gentleness or humility lately. Nor have I demonstrated it.

“Come to me.”

I do so long for rest for my soul. The soul I did not know was weary until the whisper woke me. But now, as I sit in the secret place I SEE that my soul is oh so weary…of wrestling…of worrying…of working…of wanting…of waiting. It longs for rest. It cries out for respite within me, even without my knowledge. As I sit in my chair I realize that my soul is the restless one, but my spirit is the part of me who knows the solution. It is the part of me that knows the truth.

“Come to me.”

Further down I read about a yoke, and I think the metaphor of a yoke being easy and light doesn’t quite fit the reality, because in reality a yoke means hard work. Backbreaking work. Work that requires two animals, pulling full force, to carry a heavy load. Yet, if I was going to yoke myself, if there was a heavy load that required me to pull, I would prefer easy to hard and a lighter burden rather than a heavy one. In this secret place, with my heart wide open, it comes to me that I want this yoke. I need it because it is the secret to true rest. Tethering my heart. Joining myself to him.

“Come to me.”

My soul cries out. “There is no peace. There is no rest. Only heartache and hardship. Everything is fractured and broken. It is all I can see. How do I find rest? How do I relieve the burden that I do not know I am carrying?” My spirit rises up to silence its cries, and answers. “Shhh. I remember gentleness and humbleness of heart. I have felt it before and I know where to find it again. Oh, my weary soul…how can you forget so easily the words that bring us to the place of the unloading of our burdens?”

“Come to me.”

Shall we go and lay them down?