Are You Tired of _______________?

 

“And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly…”

Luke 22:44

Today’s blog is a fill in the blank blog.  Answer this question – Are You tired of You fill in the blank?  I was going to ask, “Are you tired of the pandemic?”  I encounter that a lot today.  I find myself saying it. “COVID got old back in March.”  But truth is that the pandemic is only one of the things people are tired of.  It’s a big thing… maybe the biggest thing but it’s far from the only thing.  People are tired racism, violence and rioting.  People are tired of all the partisan bickering in our nation.  People are tired of being stuck at home.  They are tired about worrying about their jobs.  People are tired of watching the news… tired of the election… tired of war… tired of ZOOM… Tired of kids not being able to go to school in person… tired of having to make decisions they have never had to make before – about opening or closing, working from home or going back to the office… The list of things people are tired of is a long one.  So, you fill in the blank. 

Do you know what I am most tired of? I am tired of hearing me complain.  I feel like there is a lot of complaining going on right now… about everything. Don’t get me wrong.  I understand it all.  That’s what I was doing in the first paragraph of this blog – listing many of the things I and others find to complain about.  But sometimes I really get discouraged by all the complaining I do.  The guilt weighs on my heart.  I am a Pastor.  I should be a voice of God’s hope during all the complaining… not simply another voice offering complaints.  Maybe you know what I mean.  Perhaps you beat yourself up about the same thing.  “I am a Christian,’ you say to yourself.  “I shouldn’t be complaining so much.  I should be a voice for hope.”

But if you can’t complain, what else do you do with the things you are tired of.  That’s what made me think these words from Luke 22.  Jesus had endured a lot.  Do you think he was tired of it all?  Do you think he was tired of his disciples not understanding him?  Do you think Jesus grew tired of all the “religious leaders” trying to trip him up and discredit him?  They should have known better.  I wonder if he was tired of all the people coming to him, day and night with so many demands, so many needs.   I wonder if he ever tired of carrying everyone else’s burdens.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, you can see this at work on our Lord.  Knowing that the suffering and death of the cross was coming the next day, our text says that Jesus “was in agony.”

Look at what He did with that agony.  Luke tells us that “He prayed more earnestly…”  He didn’t complain to everyone else.  He took His agony to God.  He laid His burdens at the feet of His Father.  He sought others to pray with Him.  He invited his disciples to watch and pray with him.  In the days of His suffering, the Bible says that Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverences.”

That’s why Jesus was able to carry the burden God laid on Him – our burdens.  He carried them to the cross where He suffered and died under the load of all that wears us out.  He bore them up triumphant… overcame and conquered them all when on the third day He was raised to life again.  Now he invites you and me to bring these things to God.  “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” That is his promise to us.   

There is a hymn that encourages us to “learn of Jesus Christ to pray.”  From him we learn what to do with anything and everything we are tired of… we learn to pray more earnestly… to give our burdens to Jesus… to let Him carry them… indeed to carry us through everything – even through this never ending pandemic.