Rest Assured: Of Puzzles and Pictures

 January 11 2026

Genesis 1:1-2, John 1:1-5

         These early cold days of the new year causes me to remember when the winter days got to cold for us kids to play outside, my Mom would often get us to help her put together jig saw puzzles. You learned quick to find the corners but sometimes, like when the puzzle was round, you had to make sense of these pieces in other ways. You had to look at the picture on the box and begin to sort the pieces by their color. As I think about putting puzzles together, you know, without the picture on the front of the puzzle box, the task of putting the puzzle together would be almost impossible.Sure, you might be able to find the corner pieces but to figure out the the picture hidden there among the mess would be prove to be extremely difficult.

         In much the same way as putting a jig saw puzzle together, to figure out this life we find ourselves in requires a picture which can assist us to put the pieces together. In this series of messages called, “Rest Assured”, we are discovering just what Jesus reveals to us, which is that he has been given to us so that we might experience a life marked by rest. This is the promise Jesus gives to us in Matthew eleven, verse twenty-eight, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me , for I am gentle and lowly in your heart and you will find rest for your soul, your very life.” Jesus teaches us that when we unite ourselves with him then we will discover just what picture is there on the outside of this box called life. We at last can rest when we know just what life is supposed to look like and perhaps more importantly, we can also know where we fit in this picture Jesus lays out for us. You see, what it means for us to be yoked with Jesus is that we are bound to him so that where he leads, we will feel strangely compelled to follow. So as Jesus walks on those ancient paths which lead to our rest, we do not need to know the way for Jesus will be for us the very way we can get to this promised rest. As we follow Jesus, then our life becomes a moment by moment trusting upon the leading of Jesus. Jesus is for us then, not just the way that leads us to our promised rest, he is in all actuality, our very life because his life has consumed our own as we have allowed him to lead us is into the true picture of our promised rest. When we at last, look upon this picture, we find that it is the very image of Jesus himself. And we also find that we are able to fit into this picture when we become conformed to the contours of the piece of the puzzle called Jesus, for he is our truth about this puzzle of life. You see when Jesus is for us the way, the truth and the life as we find in the fourteenth chapter of John, the result for us is that we are able to rest as we abide with him. 

         Now the truth Jesus is leading us to is the very truth found in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, the story of creation.You see, Jesus is telling us the original back to the future story because where he is leading us to is to a future where the original creation found in the beginning is our ever present home. You see, what Jesus also reveals to us is that he was there right at the beginning when chaos gave way to creation. This was the mind blowing realization of the early church. I mean, listen to Paul, in the eighth chapter of First Corinthians who writes, “…yet for us there is one God, from who are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and through whom we exist.” Paul could further write in the opening verses of Ephesians that our Heavenly Father has chose us in Jesus Christ, before the foundation of the world. These amazing statements of faith given to us by Paul, of course come from what Jesus himself has revealed to us. In a prayer Jesus spoke on the night he was betrayed, as found in the seventeenth chapter of John, Jesus is heard to say, “Father, I desire that they also, all those whom you have given to me, may they be with me where I am, to see my glory, the glory which you gave to me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” So Jesus, by own admission, clearly tells us that he had a front row seat when chaos became creation. Jesus, as John records in the first chapter of his gospel, is indeed the Word made flesh. The Word is the same word John also tells us was there, in the beginning, within God, one with God. 

         So we trust the leading of Jesus because he is as we hear at the beginning of the book of Revelation, “…the Alpha, the beginning of all things and he is the Omega, the end of all things.” When we take what we now know about Jesus, that he existed in the Father’s love before creation and through him the creation came to exist, we can now look at the creation story with new eyes. This story begins with a statement about God; God alone is the one who created everything, the heavens above and all of creation here on earth, so that what is written here in Genesis is an account of what God alone has done. Now it is also important that we remember that this account was originally a story told perhaps around a campfire at the end of the day. It is a story whose telling brought hope to the people of God when God was forced to throw them out of the land promised to them because of their rebellion and idolatry. God told his people that they needed to spend seventy years being slaves to the Babylonians and only then would he bring them back to live in Judaea. This time span is important because after seventy years most of the people who left for Babylon would have died there. What it appears God is doing is raising up a new generation who might at last be the obedient people he expected them to be. So, the task set before the people of God was that they had to instill their faith into their children otherwise there might not be anyone left to live in the land promised to them by God. This was no easy task, either, because they would be raising their children in a hostile environment, one where the story of many different gods could be heard on every street corner. Again, this sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it? You see, the people of Babylon had their own creation stories, yet they were vastly different than the one held to be true by God’s people. God, I believe, understood that this would happen when his people found themselves in exile and he may have even welcomed a side-by-side comparison to these other, so-called gods. You see, in all these other stories, the world always begins as a mess for the gods to clean up and sort out. For the worshippers of false gods, the world has always been a mess, it is currently mess, and it will remain a mess, so just pick a god who you believe will be the best ruler over the mess we find ourselves in. Such a dismal state of affairs would never have been any great source of rest and peace for those who clung to such stories.

         Well, even though the people of the ancient world did not have much to hold fast to in the stories they told about creation, we can, nonetheless understand why they told these stories of their beginnings. You see, in the quiet evenings, there around a fire as they thought about life, the people would think of questions that they struggled to find answers to. As they looked in wonder at this world they lived in, people would quite naturally be curious as to just whose fingerprints were on these marvelous works they witnessed throughout nature? Then they may have thought, if there was one who had made this world, why had he made this world like he did? Why did there seem to be an order to the workings of this place we call home? And then it makes sense that people would ultimately begin to consider, just why they were here, just why had they been given a life here in this place? Then, like many of us may have wondered ourselves, they may also have searched for the answer to the question,  “Does my life have a purpose or is my life just some random event void of any meaning?”.

         The story of Genesis is the story is a narrative which gives us answers to questions such as these. You see, for those who first heard this story, the question of how creation came to be was not even a question they would have thought about. While many people today still try and use the story found in Genesis to explain how our world came to be, this simply is not the focus of this creation story. Perhaps the people who first listened to this creation story held to the wisdom found in the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where God declares that just as , “..the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts…”. What this is telling us is that there will be many aspects of creation that will be beyond our comprehension and we must simply accept that this is how it must be. Yet even so, what the creation story found in Genesis does do is to answer those nagging questions about this life we have as people here on earth, questions that no scientific endeavor can give us the answers to. Here in Genesis is found the reasons why God created this world we live in and just what purpose we have as people who live within that creation. In other words, the creation story in Genesis gives us a pretty good picture to help us figure out this puzzle called life.

         So, in the beginning, we are told that the earth was without form, and it  was also empty, a scene of absolute nothingness. Here is where creation begins, with the waiting for God to do what only God can do, to make something exist where nothing used to be. What we can know about God right here in the beginning, is that he alone has the ability to create life out of nothing. This is a great comfort for us to realize, because here is the God who can take the nothingness that causes us to be afraid and through his power, the nothingness gives way to something. God calls us to know him as this sort of God so that we trust him even in the face of an unknown future, for what greater unknown future could there be then the one found right here at the beginning. 

         We are told next that the Spirit hovered upon the waters. The image we are to have is that of a bird which is hovering as they build their nest, a place for new life to spring forth from. Now, the people who first listened to this story would have also recognized that the Spirit appearing as a bird hovering over their nest, is the very same image given to them on the night of Passover. The night of Passover is the night when God brought the last plague upon Egypt so that the king who held the people of Israel captive would at last grant them their freedom. This plague was that the angel of death was going to go throughout the land of Egypt and in a single night, take the life of every firstborn child and animal. The only ones who would be spared were those who had painted the doorframe of their homes with the blood of a lamb as God had instructed them. The people of Israel waited in their homes on that terrible evening, prepared to go when the time came for them to be free at last. This is why they ate their roasted lamb and their unleavened bread with their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hands. And as they heard the cries go up from throughout Egypt, the people of Israel who had obeyed God’s instructions found that God had hovered over their homes protecting them from the angel of death which passed over them. On this night the people of Israel discovered that their God is a God who places himself between them and death, the God who can bring life out of a night of death. 

         So here at the beginning of Genesis, we have a similar image of God placing himself between the emptiness and nothingness of chaos and this something of life that he is getting ready to bring forth. What we can know about God, in just these first few verses of our creation story, is that the glory of God is seen as he begins with utter nothingness which we discover is no match for God’s ability to replace that emptiness with the wonder of his creation. So we can rest assured that God indeed can take the nothingness of our empty hands and fill them with the very wonder of his creation. Yet this is not all, for God is also found to be like a bird hovering over what he is bringing forth, covering his creation with his very self so that the chaos cannot damage it.The image may even suggest the truth that all of God’s creation is always covered by the wings of our creator God for we are never told that God has, at some point, stopped watching over that which he has brought about. So, again, what we have come to know about God is that he is a God who covered over his creation with his wings right at the beginning and that he continues to do so which is an amazing comfort for those looking for rest. 

         So, the story of creation begins with the faith that the canvas upon which God works is the vast expanse of nothingness, that which is without any form, totally empty So, the something of life that God is bringing forth has as its cornerstone, the power of God to do what seems so utterly impossible to us. This is the base upon which creation is launched. Then we also learn that God himself covers over us just like a mother bird protecting her young, and this protection is as eternal as God himself. Right here then, the picture of life is seen to be framed with the power of God as its lower edge and the love of God as its top edge. When this is revealed to us by Jesus, then his promise of rest becomes much more believable, doesn’t it?

         At last then, we are ready in our creation story to witness the formation of our universe, and just what does God do in order to bring order out of the void? The amazing answer is that God simply speaks. Into the nothingness where even sounds to not exist, incredibly a voice cries out, “Let there be light”. Then there was, indeed, light where only nothing had been. The power of God to take nothing, the dark emptiness of the chaos that threatens us and create something right there, the light, is all done with a word. A simple word that anyone can speak but when spoken by God, this familiar word suddenly has a strange power to bring forth a new reality. This is the same word that John tells us was there with God, and in God, and all things were brought forth through this word, the very word who took on flesh and has come to live with us. In this word was held life, what John records as being the light for all people. This life, held within that word, this is the light that has come to shine in the darkness, and yes, we are certain that the darkness has not, and will not ever overcome this light, this life of the one we know as Jesus. In this light, the picture we need to solve this puzzle called life can at last be seen. So, let us rest knowing that the God whose power and love were there at our beginnings is the same God, with us today and for all eternity. Praise the Lord! Amen!           

         

Rest Assured: Are You Ready to Rest?

 January 4 2026

Matthew 11:20-30

         Happy New Year! Can you believe that once again we find ourselves facing another brand new year? Well, the good news is that right here, at the beginning of yet another year, the wisdom of the church calendar proves to be very helpful. If you remember back to the beginning of the season of Advent we said that this is when the church has its new year according to the church calendar. What we learn during Advent is God’s plan to give us a hope and a future. This plan, we also discovered, was also tied to God’s plan to give us peace through our willingness to to be at peace with our neighbors. This then, was followed by the joy of God causing us to rejoice no matter what our circumstances. Finally, above all, God longs for us to know the the certainty of his love for all people, a love that binds our life together with the life of God so that we might know God. So there in Advent we waited for these promises God made to us to become at last real to all of us. We longed for the day when our life might at last be filled with hope, that we could find a way to experience a lasting peace, that joy could bubble up within us and love at last would be the very way of life for all people. This day arrived at last, the day we know as Christmas, the day when the baby Jesus was at last born. Here at last was the long awaited king in the line of David who would usher in an era marked by hope in the hearts of all people, a time of lasting peace, an age of abounding joy and steadfast love. This is the truth that Paul understood so well for he writes in the first chapter of Second Corinthians, that Jesus is the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises. 

         What this means for us as we face this new year is that instead of being filled with dread and despair, we can instead greet this new year with a living hope within us. Instead of expecting a year full of drama and stress, we instead are ready to experience peace as we seek the peace of others. We can also know that this does not have to be a year of chasing after every new thing that we believe will bring us happiness because we now know where a deep and abiding joy can be found. So, yes, this is the year that love is going to rule our life. We can look at this year so differently all because we have been given a gift whose name is Jesus.

         So, we have gone through the season of Advent, which was the four weeks of the church calendar, and then a new season called Christmas began when the birth of Jesus was celebrated. The season of Christmas lasts only twelve days as we might know from singing the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. So, beginning on the seventh of January we enter yet another season which the church calls, “Epiphany”. This is just a fancy name for revelation. If we remember again how we lit candles during Advent what we are to understand is that with the coming of Jesus, the Christ child, a light has come into the world. Now at last we what previously had been hidden from our eyes because of this worlds darkness is at last revealed to us in the light of Christ. The season of Epiphany, then,  is a time for us to consider just what has been revealed now that the light and life of Jesus has entered into our world.

         As I considered how to explain this season of Epiphany, I was reminded of a story about our first daughter, Elizabeth, when she was a mere six months old on Christmas. This was such a fun time to take and show her off at all of the family gatherings. Well, something rather funny happened when we took Elizabeth to a Christmas party for Jennifer’s relatives. Jennifer had a cousin whose son, Andrew, was around eight years old that Christmas. Andrew was a very bright kid who was always thinking. It became obvious that Andrew was pondering quite a bit about this new baby that everyone was fussing over because he stood and looked at Elizabeth then exclaimed, “What does it do?”. You see, Andrew just could not figure out what all of the excitement was about this doll baby who did nothing more than eat and fill its pants. I believe that there just might be a lot of people who are much like Andrew when they celebrate yet another Christmas. They look upon the manger scene and see the baby Jesus asleep on the hay, and they too wonder, “What does it do?”. Much like Andrew wondered about this six month baby called Elizabeth, so too I imagine many people after Christmas are left wondering about this new born child named Jesus.They desperately want to ask, just why in the world is everyone fussing over this baby born in a little backward village named Bethlehem?

         Now if, say, one of those people who are thinking back on Christmas and wondering just what was all this celebration was really all about, and they came to you, what might you be able to tell them about Jesus? Just what exactly does this Jesus do? Without much thought we might explain that Jesus is our hope for eternal life, you know the gift given to us so that we might not perish and have eternal life. Yes, this is a very good reason to get excited about Jesus but what if this person goes on and asks you, but what does this Jesus do for me here, in this life I’m living right now? They are rightly wondering, is this Jesus of any earthly good? So, just what answer might you give to someone who asks you if Jesus has any bearing on this life we are living, right here, right now, in all of the mess we so often find ourselves in? 

         Well, if you listened carefully to the scripture for today, you will know that Jesus indeed has something to give to all of us, today. In our scripture we do find that Jesus himself is telling us just what has been revealed when he was born as one of us. Like all of the stories found in the Bible, the background circumstances prove to be very important and this is true for the scripture we read here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. We find that Jesus has done some powerful and amazing works in the cities that are located around the Sea of Galilee. As we may recall, Jesus healed the sick, going from place to place because the crowds had grown so large. Yet in spite of these people seeing the evident power of God at work among them, they, nonetheless, refused to allow this witness to affect their hearts. God had shown up in their midst in a demonstration of power and healing and the reaction of those who saw these miracles was a yawn, and maybe a shrug of their shoulders. They easily turned back to their life like nothing had ever happened. But something great had happened, heaven invaded earth so do course, Jesus was angered. Jesus was shocked by the unwillingness of these people to let their minds be transformed by what had been revealed to them. Can you begin to understand the crisis that arises when God reveals himself to us in power? As we enter into a season when we ask the question, “Just what has God revealed to us in Jesus?”, we have to expect that we will become different people when we witness the power of God.

         Jesus, yes, was rightly outraged by the refusal of these towns to be affected by what they had witnessed. So he takes the truth about judgment day, and he brings it to bear upon that very moment when these people turned their backs on God. Jesus reaches back to the infamous story of Sodom, found in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, where God judged this town worthy of destruction all because he could not find ten righteous men living in that city. Jesus states that on judgement day that it was going to go better for the citizens of Sodom than for those who had seen his miracles and went home unmoved. You see, they, unlike Sodom, had indeed witnessed the mighty acts of God in their midst, yet such displays of power had borne no fruit in their lives.

         Now it is right here that our story takes a strange turn because Jesus goes from pronouncing judgment on these unrepentant people to being caught up in a moment of intimate conversation with his Heavenly Father. Here, again, we have yet another revelation. We discover in the words of Jesus that the reason why it was that so many people refused to be transformed after witnessing the works of God. You see, God, our Father, hides his grace from those who think they have life all figured out. No, God rightfully, gives his grace only to those who are actually interested in his plan, that great goal that God has for all people. This is why Jesus tells us that the ones God is looking for are those who know themselves as being children. Just like we laugh at a child telling their parents just how they intend to live their life, so God too must be shocked by our arrogance when we believe we can demand that he support the plans we might have. Like children we must know we are utterly dependent on our Heavenly Father. We must come with our hands held out ready to receive a gift. After all, this is the way Jesus approaches his Father, for in his prayer he reveals to us that all things have been handed over to him. Can you see the Son standing before his Father, his hand held out in anticipation to receive? So too, we must follow this posture of Jesus. Jesus in childlike obedience takes what is given to him by his Father. Jesus then turns, and he offers his gift to all who come to him as a child, hands held out ready to receive.

         You see, when we receive this gift from Jesus, this grace of God, we come to know something of the goodness of God. Through the receiving of this gift we have come to know that, as James says in the first chapter of his letter, every good gift, and every perfect gift comes down to us from our Father above, the one whose face never turns away from us. So, yes, we can come to know ourselves as those Jesus has chosen to share his life with us, an unbelievable honor. All of this leads us to the moment when Jesus tells us these well-known words, “Come to me all you who labor and are carrying loads that are way to heavy for you to bear, I am the one who will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I am gentle, lowly in heart. With me you will find rest for your soul, your very life. My yoke is easy; my burden is light.” At last we come to the whole point of what Jesus is getting at which is that he is the gift which really does, keeps on giving. Jesus is the gift given to us by our Heavenly Father, the only one who is able and willing to give to us something called, rest. You see, Jesus did not need the gift of prophecy to see which of those who had seen God’s power and had refused to repent. All Jesus needed is to look and see that these people were restless. They were walking around with the weight of the world bearing down upon them. There they were, rushing about, fussing over what they were going to have for dinner, and what they were going to wear, becoming consumed by all of the concerns of their life and it was wearing them out. Who says that the Bible doesn’t connect with real life, right? You see, the reason why Jesus was so upset by their lack of enthusiasm with what God was up to, is that the result was so tragic. Here God was holding out a way for his people to find relief from this nagging restlessness that overwhelmed their life and instead they chose to stick to their own wisdom and understanding. A common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and such was the situation Jesus witnessed, people living in a hell of their own making, refusing to try something different. It simply did not have to be like this. God had stepped into their situation and he offered them a gift named Jesus. Yet, they were so busy wringing their hands over their situation that they could not simply stop and hold their hands out to receive what God had to offer, the gift of Jesus who held out the gift of rest for all of them.

         So the answer to the question, “ Just what does this baby do?”is this: This child named Jesus, is a gift from God, the Father, who offers to all the gift of a life marked by rest. We should not be surprised by this offer of Jesus to give us rest though, because what Jesus tells us here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew is a mere retelling of what we find in the sixth chapter of Jeremiah. There God tells his people, “Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” This truth that God reveals to us about rest is further found to be very similar to what God spoke to Moses after the tragedy of the Golden Calf. In the thirty-third chapter of Exodus, Moses prays for the people of Israel so that God’s wrath would not be upon them. Moses pleads with God to remain with his people, reminding God of the grace he had shown to him. Moses says to God, “ Now that I have received your grace, please show me your ways, your ancient paths, so that I may know you, so that I might continue to receive your grace. Remember that this nation is your people.” God responds to this prayer of Moses by telling him, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”. Where the sin of God’s people abounded in their worship of the Golden calf, God’s grace abounded even more, for even to these sinful people, God holds out the possibility for them to know his presence and experience his rest.

         What we find when we go searching for a better understanding of this idea of rest is that it is rooted in the story of creation, where on the seventh day, we are told that God rested from his labors. This is the very reason why the people of God were told to rest every seventh day and call that day holy because this is what our holy God did there in the beginning. In the next several weeks, in this series of messages entitled, “Rest Assured”, we are going to consider, more closely, just what has been revealed to us in this gift of Jesus. We are going to consider just what does it mean for us to receive this rest offered to us by Jesus. What might it mean for us to enter into this new year and not be wore down from all of the concerns, anxiety and worry that can come over us as we look to an unknown future. I love this quote by the Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom who says that we should, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” As we set out on this new year, let me ask you, “Are you ready to trust this unknown future ahead of us to the God that we know?”. “Are you ready to stop wringing your hands and instead simply hold out your hands out, like a child, saying, “Rest, please!”, and then expect that Jesus will lead us to rest in the Father’s arms. So, are you ready to put the yoke on, and unite yourself with Jesus as he walks the ancient paths, knowing that he is leading us to find rest in a future yet unknown? I pray that this is the year that you experience Jesus as the one who gives us the rest we all are searching for. To God be the glory! Amen!