By: Deacon Renée Beyea (MDiv)
Cause I’m worn and my prayers are wearing thin / I’m worn even before the day begins. Why does a song like “Worn” by Tenth Avenue North resonate strongly? We are assaulted, as a culture, as a church, by fatigue that sears thinness into our prayers, into our very souls.
The Puritan work ethic, for all its noble ideals, is a legacy that still drives much of our society—no longer to glorify God, but to accomplish, attain, accumulate. We invest late hours in the office or at our children’s baseball games. We collapse into our beds wishing to halt exhaustion’s cycle. We descend into escapism, into entertainment’s sedating reality. How many hours are devoured by television, movies, gaming, social media? We are wearied by faltering marriages and hurting families, by inevitable aging and chronic illness, by unconfessed sin and secret regrets. Yet to every weariness, the Holy Spirit speaks the hope and freedom won for us in Christ. How dearly we need the Good News!
And then there is weariness in ministry, in the quiet moments when we consider the sacrifice, when we cannot see the result and cry out to the Lord in the silence of our hearts. His Spirit whispers, Do not give up. We are ourselves the yield of previous generations, living evidence of the Lord’s faithfulness. The fields in which we toil today may not produce their bounty in our lifetimes, but as surely as the sun rises, the rain falls and the wheat sprouts, our gracious God will gather the harvest at the proper time. Our labor is not in vain.