Rest for your souls: Jesus cares for us

You need to rush to get ready in the morning and have all the, “To-Do’s,” for your day in your head. You arrive at work, open your e-mails and find more tasks with short deadlines. You start your day at university or school and remember that you have a test coming up soon. As a parent, you wake up in the morning with a cold, but have to run errands, organize the household and your kids’ activities.

Do any of these situations in which life is hectic and you feel a lot of tension seem familiar to you? Your body, mind and soul cannot find rest. A soon as you handle one chaotic situation the next one is just around the corner.

In the midst of the chaos, Jesus promises that he sees you and that he cares for you. He sees the situation we are in and even knows how we feel. Jesus knows what we need in the daily things and in the long run. Not only that, but he also wants to fulfill our needs.

In Matthew 15:32-39 we read that Jesus was preaching to a crowd of 4,000 people. After a while, he noticed that the people that the people were hungry. Jesus saw their need for nourishment for the body and wanted to provide food for them. In the same way, Jesus also sees our need for nourishment; for the body, soul and mind.

When Jesus asked his disciples how much food they had, they told him they had, “seven loaves of bread and a few small fish” (Matthew 15:34). Even though this does not seem enough to feed the 4,000 people Jesus gave thanks, broke the bread, and commanded the disciples to share the food with the people. After distributing the bread and the fish among the crowd, everyone ate as much as the wanted and seven baskets of food was leftover. Jesus provided abundantly for the crowd. In the same way, Jesus also cares for us with more than we need.

Sometimes we may not see or understand the ways Jesus cares for us, because in Germany our need is often not as obvious as the hunger of the crowd in the Bible. However, we can be sure that Jesus cares for us and wants our body, souls and mind to find rest in him.

How Jesus cares for you practically can look very different depending on your individual situation and needs. For me personally Jesus refreshes my body, soul and spirit during slow Saturday mornings in my armchair with a mug of coffee and some music.

How might you allow Jesus’ time to refresh you?

Believing that Jesus sees you and cares for you does not mean we will automatically feel rested and refreshed all the time. But when we let Jesus nourish our souls and allow him to refresh us, we can receive deep rest.

If you want to learn what it means that Jesus sees you and cares for you and why he does so, please reach out to us. We would love to meet you and hope to see you at our first Worship Gathering on 3 December. We will post more information about that day soon.