My wife and I have an ongoing bemusement with how experts try to claim bits of your time throughout a day. You need to stretch 10 minutes a day. Exercise 30 minutes a day. Cook a nutritious and delicious meal in an hour each day. Sleep at least eight hours, not counting an hour you give yourself to wind down at the end of the night. Spend an hour with your children each day. Spend an hour with your spouse each day. Clean for 15 minutes. Learn a new skill in just 10 minutes a day. Of course, none of that counts the eight hours a day many of us spend working, or the time it takes getting to and from your job (an average of about 50 minutes a day for Americans). A Google search for the phrase “minutes a day” pulls up nearly 18,000,000 results!
My spouse and I find this amusing (and a bit exasperating) because there, of course, only so many minutes a day to cram everything in — 1,440 of them, to be precise. A big chunk of them are taken up by sleep, work, and other essentials, leaving a few hundred minutes a day for lots of things that are demanding your time. Juggling all the things we should or want to do is a pretty big burden at the end of the day.
In today’s Gospel selection from Matthew, the notion of burden is foremost in Jesus’ words. His message is so earnest and simple, it’s easier to paste its 49 words than to summarize or omit: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
When I first came into the faith, just over a decade ago, I sighed a bit at the idea of trying to add Jesus to a life that was already jam-packed. Like the minute-counting above, how could Jesus not be one more demand upon already-busy days?
Yet today’s Gospel explains why that hasn’t been the case for me. Jesus promised to give rest to those who come to him, and he has delivered. His yoke is easy, and his burden light.
The reason is that, for me (and I suspect many others), the faith seeps effortlessly around the events of the day. If each individual task is a pebble placed in a glass, and that glass is filled to the top with pebble after pebble, then Jesus is like a cup of cold water poured over those pebbles, filling the gaps, surrounding and soaking into each pebble.
Exercising? Spend those moments conversing with Jesus. Cooking? Contemplate God at the same time. Stuck in a rush-hour commute? A great time to turn off the radio and spend minutes with Jesus. Working? There are surely many idle moments where you can say a quick prayer or reflect for a moment in gratitude.
Even those “demands” that come from following Christ are not, indeed, a burden when he lives in your heart. When I started going to Church on Sundays, I found I just woke up earlier, starting my day sooner instead of wiling away Sunday sleeping in; I ended up with more free time on Sundays, even with the worship obligation! Spending time in service to the poor or needy — or even writing these posts — has been straightforward; somehow, I’ve found the time and energy, as other “must-do” hobbies haven’t seemed as vital. As today’s reading from Isaiah says, “He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound . . . They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength.”
Modern life is incredibly busy. I suspect that human life has always been busy, with endless tasks and obligations filling our days. And human ingenuity often comes up with new things to fill the “free time” we don’t really have. Yet a life with Christ is not burdensome in the way that other obligations are. It is a “weight” that, upon wearing it, can make the other things weighing us down less burdensome.
As we prepare for the coming of Jesus during this time of Advent, it’s a good opportunity to see about pouring the living water of Christ over our pebbles, filling in the gaps of our days and getting more out of this life than we thought was possible . . . all of which helps to prepare us for the next life.
