In the Collect of the Day for today we read, in part: “Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart.”
Devoted with our whole heart.
This rolls off the tongue pretty easily—“of course we’re devoted to God, of course we’ve given our whole heart to God. Eazy Peazy, right?” But, how many times have we become distracted from our devotion, taking the reins back from God, figuring, in moments of great hubris, that we can “do it ourselves;” or other moments when we think bringing something to God is a bother, thinking we need to save the Big Kahuna for Big Kahuna issues; and then those times when we simply forget about God. Forget about turning things over, forget about trusting. Forget. And you know what? When we forget God we’ re also forgetting ourselves.
I don’t know about you, but I forget myself a lot and by forgetting myself, I forget God.
Let me explain….we’re of God, God is in us and we’re in God. It’s the miracle of Creation that we’re part of all life because God created it and we are part of God.
So when the author of the Collect writes for us to be devoted to God with our whole heart, the author is saying two things: first, when we’re distracted from God our devotion, our attention wavers. But the second, more subtle part is that since we are in God and God is in us, when we aren’t good to ourselves, when we engage in self-loathing talk, when we fail to take time to exercise or eat right, when we do everything for everyone else but fail to do at least one thing a day for ourselves, we’re abusing God, too.
Which brings us to our Gospel reading.
The reading is all about Jesus telling his followers (this is fairly early in his ministry so the disciples are really unsure what they have gotten into, assuming that Jesus was just John 2.0… but learning quickly that Jesus was altogether something new.) In an attempt to further instruct them and also maybe to relieve his own frustration Jesus engages in a bit of “what in the world do you people want from us” debate with the crowd.
He then begins to talk to our Creator God, his Abba, thanking God for giving him his disciples who he describes as being just infants in learning the Way of God….and then, at the end of this section of the Gospel, Jesus utters words of comfort and a charge to his disciples then and to us now:
“Come to me—you who are worried and burdened, lay it all upon me and let me give you rest.”
Jesus is saying—-you can’t do it all, you have to share it with me, you have to take time to rest in the Love that is me, rest in the certitude that is me, rest in the never-ending peace that is me. For doing that is devotion.
When we fail to rest in Christ, we fail to honor God, when we fail to turn our burdens over to Christ, we fail in our devotion to God.
As we settle into these summer months, I encourage us to increase our devotion to God by turning our burdens over to The Christ, the one who says, “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”
Come to me.
Go to him my friends: in exhaustion and in energy; in worry and in hope; in burden and in trust. Be with God in Devoted Rest, for it will do your heart, and God’s, a world of good. Amen
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