No matter how good things are: sometimes we are tired. No matter how good things are, in general, some bad things can make us even more tired in particular. Double tired, due to nature and evil, is very tired.
We get weary by nature. Work and play lead to sleep. We get weary, because the world is broken. Hard times, the result of sin, lead to the need for even more sleep.
Rest is sweet and so hard work makes us want to rest. We sleep and are renewed. Not all weariness is from joyful labor, some is from misfortune and the broken world.
Consider the Wonder Dog Nessie. She gets tired two ways: one natural and happy, one unnatural and sad.
If a dog loves to fetch, there is still a limit. If you are Nessie, you love to fetch, around thirty-three fetches, the joy remains, but the body is weak. You run at thirty-three, but more slowly. You drop the ball, but less quickly. If you are Nessie the Wonder Dog, you do not wish to quit, but somebody, somewhere, should make you quit. When you can no longer run, maybe, mayhap, you should no longer try. You should rest.
The walk to the park is faster for Nessie than the walk home. She carries the ball, covered in dirt and weeds, in her mouth carefully, faithfully, home to her friends. She will not let it go, even on her way back to her home. She gets tired, but fetch time is rare. Nessie would keep going even when she should stop, because she loves fetch. My job is to stop her in the pursuit of happiness.
The time comes when instead of “sit” leading to sitting, “sit” ends in laying. Instead, of sitting ready to play, Nessie plunks to the ground. This is good. Nessie had spent all her energy and is ready for the sedate life in our house!
She is eager to play, still looks up ready to fetch, if fetch is happening., but she is tired. We go home about that time. Fetch is good, but on the cold days here in Houston, fetch vanished. There is a tired that is not good. Nessie, wondrous dog that she is, could not work up the enthusiasm for fetch. The cold had made her tired, since she had to heat up the house. External problems, gratuitous evil from the point of view of Nessie, made her life wearisome. She played fetch, she did her duties, but she did not enjoy it, because the cold would not let her find her fun. Nessie bumped into good tired and bad tired.
There are, then, two kinds of weariness: joyous natural weariness and beaten down, hard times, unnatural tired. Nessie will pant over the first and whimper at the second.
At the end of the pandemic year, with whatever additional evils bad weather or life has added, consider that you might be tired. You surely do have natural weariness. Rest. You almost surely have other tiredness. Life has been harder.
Rest.
We have, all of us, done what we could. We have enjoyed some of the last year, but other bits have been hard. We might be tired from normal work, but we might also be tired
Thank God the day is coming, soon to be, when rest will come. We will, all of us, enter the Sabbath and no work will be done again, holiday without end.
Go rest.
Amen.
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