"Come to me ... and learn from me..."

Continuing to read Matthew 11:28-30
"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..."

This meditation prepared with the help of:
1. One very large cup of dark roast Columbian coffee.
2. The Brandenburg Concertos

The things we need to learn to convert weariness and burden into rest can only be learned by coming to Jesus. They cannot be learned at at safe distance. They cannot be reduced to lessons and principles that can be taught in a lecture and detached from the person of Jesus. How much of my spiritual/church life is actually a coming to Jesus? This is why prayer is so central to the spiritual life. That is, prayer as a coming to Jesus and not as a tool to control my life and the lives of others (not to mention God), or as a Christian rain dance (the right ceremony or sacramental act), or Christian magic (looking for just the right words), but as a conversation with the lover of my soul, as a "being with" the person who has already acted (was crucified) to secure my rest, both in this world and the next. This is an acceptance that what I need to ensure rest from my burden has already been accomplished. I just keep coming to the one who has secured this for me so that I can enter into an already accomplished peace.

This coming to Jesus involves certain risks, to name a few:
1. Trusting myself to another - can Jesus be trusted with my life?
2. Facing the most painful aspects of my weariness and burderns.
3. Surrender to someone greater than myself.
4. Moving outside the strict definitions of rationality and trusting in revelation.
-reference faith, "things not seen", the invisible (per Hebrews 11)
5. Engaging with an "absolute" authority.