“So be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you. . .” Be content with who you are and all your not-enoughness. We are not God. He remembers how He formed us—limited, finite creatures of dust—He was there after all! But how often do we forget this?  Do you seek ‘rest for your soul’? Humble yourself.

One of my former colleagues could go into the staff room during his lunch period and just crash out. We’re talking mouth agape, a slight snore, dead-to-the-world asleep. It didn’t matter that the Xerox machine churned, the microwave dinged, or people told jokes and laughed. He’d sit down, open the paper, and drift off in minutes.

I was envious.1

I most always took a working-lunch. Thirty minutes to shovel mediocre cafeteria food down my throat while simultaneously in a frenzy to figure out what I was going to do with my sixth period students that day. In the ten years I taught high school, I only remember feeling truly rested once. My son would be at his dad’s that night and after a simple dinner of Froot Loops, I had decided to just go to bed. It was 5:00. I slept twelve glorious hours and the next day I couldn’t get over how good I felt! I was. . . happy! My memory worked. I was patient. I felt optimistic and hopeful.

As much good as that early night did for me, it was a luxury I just couldn’t afford to take again. There were essays to read, and lessons to plan, and tests to write, and grades to enter. . . Student Council events to organize, and athletes to coach. . . A little boy to play with, and laundry to wash, and toilets to clean.

In the spring of what would be my final year of teaching, I climbed the stairs with my basket of freshly laundered clothes lifting impossibly heavy feet. I eventually gave up and collapsed in a heap of sobs. “I just can’t do it anymore,” I told Rich (my then-boyfriend, now-husband). It was no small feat to admit this. I never quit (anything!) but I was completely burned out. 

Do you know this kind of tired? Chances are you do.

Jesus has a special invitation for people like us. He bids us come:

“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)

It is a call to discipleship, to obedience, to submission—with a promise of rest.

True rest.

Perhaps to our modern ears, His metaphorical language escapes us. Be assured, however, first century Jews would have understood Him loud and clear.

Why does Jesus call us to take His yoke upon ourselves? Don’t the beasts of the field wear yokes? Beasts who plow and labor? That doesn’t sound very restful.

In a recent sermon on Revelation, my pastor said, “We are all being discipled. The question is by whom?”

In the same way, each of us wears a yoke. The question is whose?

For so much of my young adult life, I wore the yoke created by society. As I grew older, I added my own expectations and demands to it. And as the world of social media bears down on its consumers, the pressure has only intensified.

How to be a good mother. A good daughter. A good friend. A good citizen. How to be successful. . .beautiful. . .popular. ‘If you’re only committed enough, smart enough, organized enough,’ glittering highlight reels tell us, ‘you, too, can do it all, have it all, be it all.’

We’re all being discipled. The question is by whom? 

Preserving Bible Times Teaching Fellow, Doug Greenwold, gets specific: “We are all disciples of some thing or someone – be it hedonism, atheism, career, self-absorption, materialism, our favorite cause, or Jesus Christ.”

After leaving teaching, I leaned whole-heartedly into my roles of wife, mother, and homemaker and the feelings of fatigue and inadequacy persisted. “I’m not enough,” I confided through tears. My therapist asked, “For who?”

It struck me: I don’t know.

The truth is, by myself, I’m not enough, but I wasn’t created to be. “There’s only one Savior,” I told my 15-year-old, “and it’s not either one of us.” 

“When we disregard our natural human limitations, we set ourselves in God’s place. . . When we believe that with enough effort, enough organization, or enough commitment, we can fix things that are broken, we set ourselves in God’s place,” says Hannah Anderson.2

In short, we have a Messiah Complex.

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