MANY YEARS AGO, my brother, Orville, introduced a hymn to me I'd not heard before. Its moving strains often accompany me as I drive or walk in solitude or return late from a day of demands.
Art thou weary, heavy laden,
Art thou sore distressed?
"Come to me," saith One, "And coming,
Be at rest."
Growing weary is the outcome or consequence of many experiences, none of them bad but all of them exhausting. To name just a few . . .
We can be weary of waiting (Psalm 69:3).
We can be weary of studying (Ecclesiastes 12:12).
We can be weary of fighting the enemy (2 Samuel 23:10).
We can be weary of criticism (Psalm 6:6-7).
The longer wearisomeness lingers, the more we face the danger of that weary condition clutching our inner man by the throat and strangling our hope, our motivation, our spark, our optimism.
Like Isaiah, I want to sustain you who are weary with a word of encouragement:
The Sovereign LORD has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.
Since our Lord never grows weary and never gets tired, He can give strength to the weary—He really can! The Lord doesn't promise to give us something to take so we can handle our weary moments. He promises us Himself. That is all. That is enough.
Devotional content taken from Good Morning, Lord . . . Can We Talk? by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved. The full devotional can be purchased at tyndale.com.
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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