When Tough Cookies Need Some Peace

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man…and this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully. 
—Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…
—The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesian church 

Coffee for all THE TIMES.

There are days, aren’t there? Days and seasons and years where it seems like nothing is going right, where things are not ok, where we are just off. Maybe we can’t put our finger on it; maybe we know exactly why we are not ok. Maybe something is off with a friend or a family member, maybe we are in the middle of saying goodbye to things or people or jobs we hold dear and to whom we want to hold fast, but we can’t. Maybe we still miss the ones to whom we said goodbye a long time ago, and our hearts can’t forget the ache, the hole left in absence. Maybe things are slipping out of our control—we see loved ones heading down hard paths or our health is falling through our fingers like heavy, wet sand. Maybe we find ourselves looking out of the window in the middle of our day, in the middle of the circumstances we find ourselves in and we wonder. We wonder how did I find myself here? What happened that this is the job, this is the situation, this is the place in which I find myself? 

Or maybe we are just tired. We are tired of the constant noise from our phones, our TVs, our news feeds, our neighbors both next door and far away. We are tired because we can’t remember the last time we had a really good rest. Maybe we just long for a break of some kind, of any kind. We long for a new season. New seasons of good things, of breaks in our heavy skies. We tell God that we are ready for something new; that we’ve truly learned whatever lesson He could be trying to teach us. We try to beg or plead or weasel our way out of our circumstances. Maybe our circumstances are the result of our choice or another’s or merely the result of a hard and unrelenting world, but still, here we are. 

Here we, then, in our individual deserts, in our own jungles, in our mazes and labyrinths and webs. Where do we go from here? How do we find peace, how do we find our way from here? How do we break out of what holds us back, what keeps us in prisons of discouragement and depression? 

If we can quiet our phones and our minds even just a little, even just for a moment, we will hear a still, small, gentle voice, calling out to our deepest longings. 

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”—Matthew 11:28-29

This ancient call comes from Jesus, the God-Man who turned history and lives upside down, who came to us in dire circumstances of his own. Born to an unwed mother, forced to flee his native country as a child, living a common, day-to-day life of a laborer for most of his years on earth, Jesus understands the need for rest, for peace, for purpose in the middle of life’s hardest seasons. He understood how hard it is to wait, how hard it is to ignore the other calls in our lives. 

We can trust this call comes from someone who understands us in all our seasons and sorrows, and from someone who has the power and the desire to give us a true rest, a true home, a calm in the middle of the storm. This call is still for us, the modern cynics, the baby boomers, the Generation X-ers, the entitled and the apathetic, the successful and the failed, the passionate and the confused, the energetic and the tired. This call is for us, for me and for you.

He never forces us to come to him; he only calls out to us to come, the only one who can offer what we so desperately need and desire. When we come to him, even when we have to crawl or limp, he will lavish rest and grace and peace. We will not find all the sorrow gone, no; we will find that the yoke of living life is now shared, and we will now walk with Christ Himself. We will find a loving teacher, a loving savior, a loving Father and Friend to support and strengthen our hearts. Even in the middle of heavy circumstances and burdens, we will find rest. That is the radical and wild promise of Jesus to us. When we, the Prodigals who have run from home, merely turn around, we will find Jesus waiting to embrace us in love and grace. We will be amazed at what He can do with our lives, our hearts, our brokenness, our pain, our fatigue. He is ready to exchange our ashes for beauty, our sorrows for joy, our sins for holiness, our mourning into dancing. He is ready to make us new, as each day is new and full of promise.