Spinning Plates

"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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  Matthew 11:28-30

 

Rest.  A word that has repeatedly invaded my world.  Repeatedly because I need the reminder again and again.  I don’t rest well.  I especially don’t rest in my Saviour well.  Too often it takes months for me to notice that I’m not carrying the weight He has given me but rather the weight that I have put on myself and think others have put on me.  My mind becomes consumed with that weight.  Trying to put everything in it’s place.  Trying to control everything in my world.  Spinning plates.  Many plates.

And then a plate slips, it doesn’t quite crash and I try to salvage it.  That plate consumes my thinking and before I know it another one is about to fall.  How long I continue in this state of appearing in control while becoming more overwhelmed and tired by the moment is scary. 

It really is the grace of God that opens my eyes to see that it is more than I can do before all the plates have crashed and I become a nervous wreck, burnt out and broken beyond repair.   I started spinning a plate a few months ago that I thought would be difficult but doable.  I had no idea what I was getting into.  It is impossible for me to spin that plate.  I am incapable.  And now God is using that plate to show me how wobbly all of the other ones are.

It took some getting away, walking through the autumn leaves, to clear my head.  To see clearly.  (And do I see clearly even now?)  I need Jesus.  Desperately.  Not just to run a good ministry.  But because *I* need Him.  He needs to be my passion.  Just because He is worthy.  He needs to be my centre because my sole purpose of existence to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  Ministry may flow out of that, but ministry is not the end!  Jesus is!  I need to know Him.  I need to learn from Him.  I need to rest in Him.  And He will give me the load I need to carry.  And He promises that it is easy and light.  I’ve been carrying too much.  

 

Whenever I look away from Your face

Trying to make it on my own

Your grace comes and lets me fall

Into Your arms again

 

Into Your arms I’m running now to hide

Into Your arms I come and lay it all down

Into Your arms, Jesus, I come

I come, Jesus to You