Sometimes we just wear out. We’re tired, spiritless, sad, and lacking in hope. We find it difficult to meet our daily obligations. We doubt we have a purpose. We wonder if life will always be bleak.
Sometimes we carry heavy burdens. We may have health or financial problems. We may be caring for elderly parents who are becoming more frail and forgetful every day. We may be in a dead-end job with no hope for advancement or a higher salary. We may be unable to find a job. We may be alienated from our family and feel the grief of having lost our roots. We may live in a community whose values are at odds with ours, and we feel alone and friendless. We may worry about terrorism, war, and slavery. We may view natural disasters such as tornadoes and tsunamis as signs that God is punishing the world.
Perhaps the heaviest burden we carry, and the thing that wears us out most, is thinking that we have to make sense of life. Yet we haven’t been called to figure out life; we’ve been called to have faith in God’s love and goodness. We’ve been called to entrust our thoughts, emotions, and actions to God. We’ve been called to surrender to God’s will of love and mercy.
We’ve been called to come to Jesus, to turn to him in our weary and burdened state and be at rest in his heart of comfort and compassion.
Ponder: What burdens do I carry?
Prayer: Lord, you invite me to rest in you. Teach me to lay down my burdens and rest in the comfort of your love.
Practice: Today I will be faithful by resting from worry.
Adapted from Faithful Meditations for Every Day of Ordinary Time (Weeks 11-22)
by Rev. Warren J. Savage and Mary Ann McSweeny (Liguori Publications, © 2013)