Eccentric?
| Then Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light." (Matthew11:28-29) |
Eugene Peterson writes an insightful passage about being eccentric in a Biblical sense of the word. The Greek prefix "Ecc" means "out of" or "out from." Therefore to be "eccentric" is to be "out of the centre."
His argument is that the further away we move from having God at the centre of our lives, the more unbalanced and unstable our lives become. Imagine a the bumpy ride we have when the axle is not in the centre of the wheel. The more we allow the wrong things to take centre place in our lives, the less peace we will have and the more weary we become.
Restful lives and lives that stay stable and fulfilling in the long run are lives that have God at the centre.
1. To realise that there is no God but Him
2. To realise that life makes no sense if He is not on the throne.
3. To find our rest in Him
Fortunately for us, Jesus reveals the Father to us in a clear way - we don't have to wonder what God is like. There is no lurking fear that God may be a self-serving tyrant who has been ultimately corrupted by ultimate power. At Christmas time especially, we remember that God gave His Son....
And in His Son, God is perfectly revealed and we know His love and find our rest in Him.
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This concludes this series on Rest for the Weary - it's my prayer that we will learn more and more to keep God at the centre of our lives. My prayer is that you and your loved ones will have a blessed Christmas and that you'll enter the new year rested and centred on God and that you'll know His peace, love and restoration. May you "sleep in heavenly peace..."
I will resume the devs in second week of January.
