Matthew 11:28-30 — Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I am truly privileged. I have a job that allows me to take vacations. Most years, including this one, it even allows me to take time at Christmas, if I haven’t already used all my days.
This year, for the first time really, I have appreciated that this is a great opportunity to deal with burdens. It’s been a stressful year and it hasn’t been easy, sometimes, to forget about work and to focus sufficiently on faith and family.
Think about this over the last few days I’ve realized that from time to time I’ve taken my eyes of Jesus. Today He reminded me that there’s no need — ever — for me to feel stressed. The thing is, there’s no need to wait for a vacation to pass the weight over.
Don’t let me mislead you, as others might have done, over this passage. It’s not really about the “labor” of day-to-day life. Let me quote William Barclay: “Jesus spoke to people desperately trying to find God and desperately trying to be good, who were finding the tasks impossible and who were driven to weariness and to despair.” Does that describe you? It describes me some of the time. But letting Jesus take that part of the load makes all the day-to-day stuff so much easier!
Vacations provide terrific opportunities take a deep breath and rebalance work, family, and faith. What I need to remember is that those opportunities don’t just come at vacations. Bill Bright, the founder of CRU (the ministry formerly known as Campus Crusade), talked about a spiritual discipline called “spiritual breathing”. In “spiritual breathing”, you “exhale” by confessing sin, and “inhale” the Holy Spirit’s control by exercising faith. It’s that day-to-day process of repenting and re-surrendering the direction of life to the Holy Spirit that keeps the burdens manageable.
I am so grateful to God that there is no aspect of my life that He has not planned and provided for. He has even planned a way for me to deal with the times when things get to be to much for me to deal with. I need to get better at remembering that if I will cast my burdens on Him, He will sustain me!