Help Me Read and Write

[Chrysostom]

When you ask the Lord to help you read and write, you ask a good thing. Yet you say your labor under the sun leaves you too weary to do what you ought. Do not let the body’s exhaustion become an excuse for the soul’s neglect. The Apostle calls genuine love a labor, for it must hold out against many things that would pull it away.

So it is with reading and writing for the soul’s good: it is a labor of love that requires you to strive against the flesh’s desire for ease. Remember how the widow by her importunity and the Syrophoenician woman by her persistence obtained their requests. God honors those who persevere, not those who yield to every weariness. Now is the acceptable time, the day of salvation; do not put off until tomorrow what grace offers today.

Even if you think you have little strength, give that little to prayer and study, and the Lord who fed thousands with a few loaves will bless your effort. And since your time in the sun is drawing to a close, do not wait for that change to begin well. Discipline yourself now, so that when more leisure comes you will already be trained in the habit of seeking holy things. The crown is for those who strive lawfully, mastering the body’s sloth.

So rouse yourself, and pray without ceasing for the strength to read and write as you ought. He who sees your desire will not withhold the help you need.

 

[Silas]

The weariness you feel after a long day under the sun is not hidden from the Lord. He knows the frame of His children, that we are dust. Right where you are, in the ache of your bones and the fog of your mind, a deeper work is underway. God is not just concerned with what you produce with your hands or your pen; He is intent on shaping your heart into the image of Jesus Christ. That shaping often happens in the grinding exhaustion we don’t like, chipping away at our self-reliance until we depend fully on Him.

This longing you have to read and write is a good and God-given desire, but the fatigue makes you feel incapable of reaching it. Remember that the work of redemption is finished. Jesus said He came to finish His Father’s work, and on the cross He declared it done. Your ultimate standing is not built on your ability to study or compose a single sentence. It rests entirely on the completed work of Christ. You cease from your own frantic efforts to prove yourself and rest in that finished reality.

Yet, the Lord who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. He is the one who stirs a willing heart. When you pray for help to read and write, you are not asking for something trivial. You are asking for a skill that serves the sanctuary of your life with God. If your current job leaves you too spent, do not lose hope. Wait on His timing. So often our impatience gets in the way of God’s work. He may be preparing a different season for you, just as He is preparing you for that season right now.

In the meantime, while you are working under the sun, let your labor itself become an offering. Do it with quietness, providing for your needs, trusting that any honorable work is part of God’s plan for this moment. The Scripture does not tell us to shirk work but to be ready for every good work, even the unglamorous daily grind, until He moves us on. The same Spirit who gifted artisans with skill for embroidering blue and purple linen is the Spirit who can sustain your weary body and ignite your mind when the time is right.

As you walk this out, count it as a testing ground for faith. Faith is not a work that earns God’s favor, but it produces endurance. The labor of love, the kind that pushes you to the point of exhaustion, is what you are living out at your job. Let that very weariness drive you deeper into dependence on the Lord’s strength rather than your own. Your desire to read and write may be God stirring your heart for what comes next, but first He wants to do a work in you that only this season of sun and fatigue can accomplish.

I am praying that you would know the joy that comes from seeing God at work, even in your tiredness. There is a rest for the people of God, a rest that exists not because your to-do list is finished, but because the work of salvation is finished for you. Lean into that grace tonight. God’s work in your life is far greater than any page you could fill, and He is fully able to bring it to completion until the day Jesus returns.