Is Busy My Religion?

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." -Matthew 11:28-30

I've always been a busy person. I was practically raised to want to be busy. Not in a bad way, but my house always seemed to be on the go and the calendar never seemed to have much time to rest or decompress. So when I went to college, I made myself a life that was very much so the same as it was back home, filled to the brim with academics and extracurriculars because to me that was what was normal. My first year at Valpo was fine I'm not going to say it was perfect but I had found that my busy schedule was normal in all my friend's lives as well. Students at Valpo are all the same, Busy with a capital B. So coming back into this semester with 18 credits, three jobs, three organizations and trying to keep up with my friends and family didn't seem like it would be too difficult, right?

Boy did I have another thing coming from me.

But my Pastor, Pastor Jim or PJ as I like to call him spoke to the Celebrate community (my church) about the verse above. Now I've been in discussion about this verse before, but for some reason no one has ever explained what a yoke is (crazy right!) and if you also don't know what a yoke is I linked it here. Yokes were suppose to help the ox to do the hard work laid out in front of them, but sometimes even the yoke became too heavy for the ox to bare. That's were I related to Pastor Jim's message the most, I am so overworked and tired from the constant run of the day and the never ending to do list, that my yoke is too heavy.

But the next part of the verse is where I found my comfort. Jesus says, to learn from him "for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Jesus wants me to learn from him, to see what he has and strive for that. I'm so caught up in my credit hours and extracurriculars that I don't even notice how deluded my religion, my faith is for Jesus. Am I worshiping God the Father and the wonderful blessings he has given me, or have I become so busy that being busy has become my religion. Taking that step back to see that I can't do it all *and* no one expects me to is a really important lesson I'm learning right now, it's hard to say no when your whole life you feel like you have been saying yes.

But I can rest assured that my yoke will become lighter, because I am still pushing and driving to learn from the Lord.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." -Matthew 11:28-30