Immense Relief for the Weary Soul

Relief.

I’ve been thinking about this word lately. A dictionary definition of relief is to experience release from anxiety or distress. No wonder it’s captured my attention lately!

How about you?

Do you desire release from anxiety or distress? Do you have a low-level fear about various things which weigh on your soul? Do you wish that you could just get through the next finish line -- a graduation, or a job hiring period, or a season of waiting?

In his masterpiece work “Dynamics of Spiritual Life” Richard Lovelace says “renewal is the experience of immense relief over and over again.” As you read that again, allow yourself the sensation of relief to calm your restless, fretful heart.

Now let’s be honest here. We go to many things to experience relief. The short list includes entertainment, food, drink and whatever version of “checking out” comes easiest to you.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying a good movie, a rich meal or a vacation. These are good gifts to enjoy. Yet, I contend that the immense relief we long to experience over and over again comes in the deepest part of who we are – the soul.

If you’re anything like me, you have a dozen things which weigh heavy for you.  Big decisions which hang over your head. Tension in relationships which spin around in the back of your mind. Mounting uncertainties. Even, the heartache of sickness, loss and unfulfilled expectations.  This is life in this fallen world, and it can be exhausting.  As great as a day off may be, we need more.

In what follows, I’d like to look at a famous offer from Jesus and a famous illustration from the Psalmist. These may not be the occasion for your soul to experience relief, but I pray that they are.

In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus offers us himself as the relief our souls most need. He says it this way, “Come to me all of you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is something simple and obvious about Jesus’ offer.  He implies something. Jesus thinks that he has what it takes to give you continuous and immense relief.

Do you believe him?

Jesus’ offer is for those who are weighed down by worry. It is for those are exhausted with striving in this fallen world. However, his offer runs even deeper. His offer is not only for those whose desire is for a good nap. His offer is for those whose souls have been burdened by their own waywardness and wandering.

Jesus offers relief from the exhaustion brought about by our sin. You see, while not all our fatigue is owing to our erring, Jesus knows that some of it is. He knows how quick we are to abandon him as the fountain of living water and to hew out cracked cisterns for our satisfaction. He knows we are prone to wander. He knows we forget his goodness, beauty and kindness toward us and trade him for his goods. So, he issues a summons. You who are tired. You who are buried in anxiety. You who have wandered. You who have forgotten…

“Come to me”

This is Jesus’ offer.

And yet this offer comes with a compelling picture given to us in the first Psalm.  The psalmist gives us a picture of the “blessed” life. The word “bless” or “blessing” has become trite. It has been both overused and thereby emptied of its potency. Some versions of the bible use the word “happy” here to translate the Hebrew word esher. Still, I think the New Living Translation speaks well to our modern ears.

“Oh the joys of those…”  

Here the Psalmist compares the one who is “happy” in the Lord, whose life is marked by refreshing joy to a tree. He is like “a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season.”

I’d like to submit to you that the one who is deeply captured at the soul level by joy, whose life is marked by an unwavering state of happiness and blessing, is the one whose soul has experienced relief. And what picture does the bible give us of this person? This person who has experienced the continuous and immense sensation of soul-calm?

They are “like a tree” planted. Whose roots are nourished from beneath. A tree set next to a flowing stream that draws its life, its sustenance, its vitality from the flowing water it rests nearby.

This tree is sturdy, and it flourishes in every season. Its circumstances have not shaken it. Indeed, they cannot. Its livelihood is not from without, but from within.

My friend, does your soul long for relief amidst your circumstances? Is your desire for rest in the deepest part of you? There is One who offers just what you long for.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!

Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

Psalm 34:6