On Rest

The invitation is addressed with unusual precision: all ye that labour and are heavy laden. Not the idle, not the finished, but the tired, mid-task, with the list still long. Christ does not wait for the work to be done before offering rest, which suggests the two were never meant to be sequential.

Rest, in his grammar, is not collapse and it is not escape. It is a gift with a giver, handed over in person: I will give you rest. The load is not argued away or declared imaginary; it is transferred. The only part left to us is the unclenching of the hands, and that, most days, is the hardest labour of all.