“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, NASB)
Come
The command to come implies movement, you cannot stay where you are. If you are in need of rest you must move, you cannot stay still. It will not get better without action on your part. But that action needs to move you in closer proximity to Jesus.
To me
To Jesus and to Jesus alone. Jesus is the only place to find lasting rest.
All
No-one is excluded from this promise. Anyone can come.
Who are weary and heavy-laden
Who is not weary and heavy laden? Many of us work hard at maintaining the illusion that we have it all together, but let’s be honest. We don’t have it all together.
Too much of life is outside our control. We may influence, but we cannot control what goes on around us. We get tired from the burdens that we find ourselves carrying.
And I will give you rest.
We can find rest by coming to Jesus with our burdens. The last lines of the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” provide some insight as to what we can expect from Jesus:
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
No qualifications
Notice that the the only qualification that is required to obtain rest from Jesus is to come. All we have to do is show up and the rest ours. Why then do we seem to always come to Jesus as a last resort after trying all the other stuff we “know” that we should do?
Just come!