The past few weeks have been really stressful for me. Balancing school, work at the coffee shop, finding an internship for the summer, and trying to be a good bridesmaid/maid of honor. The weight of the world felt like it was ontop of my shoulders (literally, I had a headache for 5 days straight!)
Eric's super creep note was useful, because he decided to keep me accountable for resting at least one hour of my day on Tuesday. So after napping and going to walmart and almost collapsing from anxiety I finally had time to just sit down (on the floor, by my bed, in front of the heater..naturally.) I spent a little while just talking, then decided to go back to a verse in Matthew that was really monumental for me this summer, you can read that here.
Matthew 28:11
"Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
So I'm sitting and the floor and stuff.
I start to imagine all this happening in real life, what it would look like, feel like, where I would be...etc.
So Jesus says "come to me" and I'm like hmm..he's ASKING me to COME to HIM. Asking me, like if I were to be like "hey Haley, bring me some toilet paper we ran out" (except she never actually came and it was an unfortunate situation.) This is neat because the king of the universe is asking me to come to him, imagine thatttt.
So here's the King of the Universe gently asking me to come to him.
I walk over slumping, covered in dirt from a hard days work in the field (work with me here...I'm thinking 1st century Jewish work.)
Then.. He puts his hand on my shoulder, gazing into my eyes and I immediately relax. I begin to stand upright again, and as a smile begins to form, my entire face lights up.
Together we go out into the field, I pick up the yoke and put it around my shoulders (that happen to be cramping and aching in real life). But then I stop, because I don't imagine Jesus sitting up on some high thrown and me dragging him around like I'm some poor slave. No, I picture looking over to my right and him being right next to me, a yoke on his back as well.
We exchange smiles as we walk through the field together preparing for the harvest. He is walking directly beside me, smiling the whole way, teaching me how to plow correctly because he clearly knows it so well.
This was my mental image over a period of 15ish minutes.
This is not the only part that was great to me.
The rest connected in my head like a bomb over a 2 hour period:
I started thinking that I get to work with Jesus. We are working together. Both of us. Side by side. Getting to join Christ in his priestly work. BOOM. (1 Peter) (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) Also wrote about that here.
What exactly are we working for? The harvest. BAM. (John 4:35, Matthew 9:35-38, Matthew 213:24-30) Get it?
Man. That was just great.
