“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28–30
I love the phrase “the unforced rhythms of grace.”
Grace is something you don’t expect. It’s unmerited.
But when God gets involved, grace has a rhythm. It has a beat. We can learn it when we walk with Jesus.
The moments when I’m most frustrated with my daughter — and least likely to show her grace — come when I myself am not well rested. I have a schedule, a plan for how things are supposed to go — how I expect them to happen.
Life during the pandemic doesn’t quite work out that way.
It’s why everyone is so zealous to get back to normal. We want to find a rhythm that we can a follow, a beat that we can keep time with.
My default rhythm is not one of grace. It’s one of merit.
It’s not a rhythm of delight. It’s a one of duty.
Each night after dinner, my wife typically has a dance party with our daughter. At its best, it’s a glorious celebration of life and a half hour of sheer delight. My wife enjoys it. My daughter enjoys it. I enjoy seeing them enjoy it.
My daughter will occasionally kill the dancefloor buzz, however, by demanding that my wife do certain prescribed dance moves or complaining that songs my wife really likes aren’t good.
I know that, in a way, I can be the dancefloor police with my daughter. I can be the rule-setter, the boundary-guarder, and the punishment deliverer.
I can’t simply refuse to put any yoke on my daughter. My responsibility as parent requires that I make sure the everyone on the dancefloor has a good time.
The problem comes when the yoke I place on my daughter becomes burdensome, when the rules are too heavy for my daughter to bear.
When that happens, she can no longer move freely to the unforced rhythms of grace.
Today, I want to feel in my body the unforced rhythms of grace that Jesus offers me. In doing so, I will be more likely to set that beat for my daughter.
And seeing see her dance to that rhythm? Man, that will be sheer delight.