Exhausted…Learn the Unforced Rhythms of Grace
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Bob Henry
June 29, 2025
Good morning Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning the text I have chosen is from Matthew 11:28-30 from The Message version.
Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
Before I start my message, I want to thank Beth Henricks and Chris Edwards for filling in for me the last two Sundays and bringing excellent messages while Sue and I celebrated our 30th Anniversary. It is a blessing to be surrounded by such talented people. Thank you.
One thing that was extremely apparent on our time away this past week was the toll that exhaustion is taking on people in our world, whether that is from all that is going on with the possibility of war or simply life’s demanding pace. It amazes me how many people are literally crying out for rest but cannot find the time to make it a priority. Even people on vacation seem to be struggling to rest. We almost need time to transition to restful times because we no longer know or remember how to rest.
It is clear from our scriptures this morning that the Divine is concerned about rest. Jim Smith author of The Good and Beautiful God says, “The number one enemy to our spiritual formation is exhaustion.” As one who has studied spiritual formation from a variety of perspectives, that bold proclamation got my attention.
Exhaustion is an enemy to our soul and to our holistic well-being.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I think we have to start by admitting it. We have become an exhausted people, and we live in exhausting times.
I hear it all too often – maybe even you have said something like this…
“I am exhausted by listening to the news.”
“I am exhausted by politics.”
“I am exhausted by our President.”
“I am exhausted by this heat (or any weather that is not moderate or what we want.”
“I am exhausted by my kids.”
“I am exhausted by my work.”
“I am exhausted by other people’s issues and problems.”
“I am exhausted by my relatives.”
“I am exhausted by my medical condition.”
And the list goes on.
How would you fill in the blank this morning?
I am exhausted by ______________.
On our anniversary cruise last week, we were seated for dinner with two other couples a bit older than us. Two were retired teachers who ended up having to return to teaching because of the lack of social security and retirement offered them by their school district in Illinois. The other couple was a deputy police chief from Asheville, North Carolina, who retired after the Pandemic and is now the police chief of a local college, and his wife is the lead social worker in Asheville who has been dealing with the devastation of their town after hurricane Helen made landfall in September.
Talk about a table full of exhaustion. This table could be the poster child for needing some rest and relaxation. No wonder we found ourselves all on a boat adrift in the middle of the Atlantic ocean – we were seeking rest and renewal from our daily grinds.
It is proven that those in the helping professions suffer from exhaustion and lack of rest, and this exhaustion has grown by epic proportions with the recent Pandemic, natural disasters, and the political decisions which are removing benefits and dignity for these helpers.
And then we add technology and social media to all of this, and the exhaustion expands to enormous levels. Today, we must set limits for screen time, reminders to exercise, ticklers that tell us we need interaction with human people to avoid isolation, and some are now suggesting we schedule naps into our workday.
This is not something new for many cultures outside of the US. People head home from work in Spain for a siesta. And in Italy they take a riposo. And in China workers break after lunch and put their heads on their desks for an hour-long nap (it is a protected right by their constitution). Some major corporations in America have realized the benefit and have added Nap Rooms to their office space.
I recently saw a portable pod that was noise canceling, so you could go in and rest from the noise of the world or scream at the top of your lungs.
Sadly, I don’t think the need for rest is something new in our world, and it is evident from a simple glance at our bibles. Even people 2000+ years ago dealt with the lack of rest.
Actually, as I did my research for this sermon, I couldn’t believe how many times the bible talks about people needing rest.
Even when drafting the original 10 Commandments – rest was a key component.
“Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.” (Exodus 20:9-10).
When I was in my doctoral work, I was challenged to find what our Jewish sisters and brothers considered sabbath rest. Sabbath comes from the word shavat which means to “cease” or “desist.” The main observance of shavat was from sunset on Friday to nightfall of the following day.
Now, Quakers consider all days equal which can mess with this needed opportunity to rest. Thus, I like to consider rest not about a day but about a discipline.
Richella Parham, in an article posted by Renovaré titled, “The Spiritual Discipline of Rest” points out,
“…the way the human body functions has not changed much in the years since God commanded his people to observe a day of rest. The amount of time generally set aside for sleep has shrunk, but the need for it has not. In these days filled with artificial light and late-night opportunities for work and play, we must now be very purposeful in the pursuit of physical rest.
I think we often fail to consider that we must choose to rest or else we’re likely to have rest forced upon us when we are exhausted to the point of physical, mental, or emotional distress.”
Ask yourself this morning,
Have I ever found myself forced to my bed after pushing myself too hard?
I had a friend once who would say, “My getting sick is God’s way of slowing me down.” I don’t think we need to blame this on God, but rather become more aware of our life, our body’s needs, and about how much we are able or trying to juggle in this life.
This is when looking to Jesus as an example may help, and there are plenty of places in scripture that show us his discipline of rest. Often, we get so caught up with other aspects of the stories that we quickly read over or completely miss the more human aspects to which we can relate that often speak directly to this need for down time. For example:
Mark 1:35 But after this one day, “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place and there he prayed.”
In this moment Jesus secluded himself so much that his disciples could not find him and they had actually formed a search party.
Or after John the Baptist’s death, Jesus said to the disciples,
‘Come away by yourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
And in our text for today from Matthew 11:28-30 it clearly shows that Jesus understood the importance of rest. He incorporated rest into his life and his teaching. I love how The Message translates Matthew 11:28-30,
“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
That is one of my favorite phrases: We need to “learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
But probably the story I love the most is found in Mark 4. Most of us are probably familiar with this story. Jesus and his closest followers set out across the Sea of Galilee by boat. Exhausted and spent from his day of ministry and teaching, Jesus falls fast asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. While Jesus is “sawing logs and counting sheep,” (carpenter/shepherd) major storms blow in and fear sets in on everyone else aboard the boat. Mark 4:38 finds everyone a bit upset at Jesus, and they shake him awake saying angerly, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
Now, you must remember that many of Jesus’ disciples were fisherman and knew just how dangerous the Sea of Galilee could get. So, if they were frantic during a squall or storm of this nature – that was a big problem. Yet Jesus shows us that even in the literal storms of life, rest is vital to building our trust, confidence, and definitely our peace.
The reason I love this story so much is because it is just how it seems to be. You finally decide to nap, rest, take a day off, or make some time in your schedule and then someone comes and says, “What are you doing? You don’t have time to rest.”
While we were on our restful cruise, we received a text message from our neighbor which we could not read in its entirety because of the limited WiFi on the boat. What I could read said,
“We just had some really bad storms at home and I went into your back yard to check…” And then I noticed there were some photos attached.
It was like someone was saying, “You don’t have time to rest.” I rushed out of the theater where we were watching a movie and began figuring out how to contact our neighbor a different way. I was able to figure it out and found that we had sadly lost a huge part of the tulip tree in our backyard. We then began connecting with our children and my parents. Once we checked everything, we got back to our restful time.
Folks, please heear me on this. If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is there will always be another emergency, another bad political decision, more work to do, someone to help, something to fix, but sometimes to help us be better people in our world, more understanding, more clear about our decisions, we are going to need to say, “I am taking a rest, because that is more important at this time.”
And when you and I are in the thick of the storms of life, do we take Jesus’ advice or simply push on.
Do we find a quiet place to rest?
Do we intentionally find time to recover and renew our life?
Do we, while everyone else is frantic around us, have the personal awareness and fortitude it takes to find a place stop the madness around us and really rest?
Are you in need of rest, today? Would your week start better if you rested today?
If you allowed yourself to slow down and pause for a while might you be able to center down and worship or take action in a more meaningful way?
To help us begin to process our need for the discipline of rest. I want to offer you some queries to ponder this morning (you will find them on the back of the bulletin):
· What exhausts you or keeps you working past your limits?
· When and where do you most deeply rest?
· Who helps you rest?
· What is it like for you to set aside time to rest and recharge?
· How regular and inviolable is that time?
After you have had a moment to consider those queries, let us center down and enter a time waiting and, this morning, restful worship. Imagine the Divine saying to you this morning, “Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest” and then allow yourself to center down and enter that space this morning.