Come to me...

The Bible is so amazing to me. First of all, God wrote 66 books--66 of them! in which we might learn about him and know his love for us. But the most amazing thing is how he speaks through them. Words that you thought you knew speak in ways you never knew they even could.

Case in point: Matthew 11. I read the last 5 verses of it (25-30) for my lectio divina reading this morning. I knew these words, so using them for a lectio divina reading, I was nervous. I didn't want to just read the words because I knew that I needed rest and hey, this passage is about rest. (Which is why I chose it over Psalm 50.) I was afraid of a useless 20-30 minutes of something I already knew. Heh. Well then.

The words that stuck out to me were not "rest" but, "Come to me."

To begin, this is an invitation. This is an invitation to find our rest in him. He wants us to find our rest in him. It's not like we are the little girl or little boy tugging on Daddy's pant leg to get his attention, and Daddy's like, Darling, I'm busy. But Daddy! Ok ok, fine. And picks you up and keeps on talking to whoever. It's not like the fact that I am tired and worn down and aching is a bother to him, that the fact that I need him is an inconvenience. I don't have to shyly wait outside his door, hoping that I'm not interrupting something with my stupid insecurities. No, he's saying, Come to me. Come to me, I will give you the rest--not just that you want, but that you need, the rest I know you need.

Secondly, I never really understood the connection between the middle verse (27) to all the rest. It felt kind of random to me. Hey God, thanks for doing this. Oh, btw, I have a secret noone knows--but I can share it with you, if I want to. And you know, you can find your rest in me. But it's not that at all. You can't interact with someone you don't know. You can't find rest in someone if you don't know who they are. And he says that he chose to reveal the Father to us, to me. "All things have been committed" to him. And he chose to reveal himself to me. This is all under his control. He wouldn't have shown himself to me if he didn't want to. But he did.

Finally, the verb is "come." Obvious, I know. But seriously. The verb is "come." The verb is not "go" or "follow" or even "seek." The verb is "come." It has an inward directionality to it, whereas go, follow after, and seek seem to have an outward directionality to them. "Come" implies a sense of definitive location. He's saying, I'm right here. Come to me. I'm right here. And I have always been right here. I am right here.