Back in the Dark Ages, when I was a kid in Jr. High, I played on the school football team. My claim to fame was not my athletic prowess on the field. I was kind of big and super-slow, oafish even, but to my favor, I did like to hit people and get them to the ground.

What I was known for though had nothing to do with football: I held the team record for the number of detentions after school, and it wasn’t even close. It seemed like every other day I was required to stay in detention for some infraction (usually talking and laughing at what the teacher thought were inappropriate moments), and that made me late for football practice, which was not very popular with the coach. There was always a physical price to pay for being late to football practice. Out behind the school next to the practice field, there was a steep hill with a dirt path through some overgrown weeds. The penalty the first time you were late for practice was to run 10 hills up and down with full pads on. The second time, you got to choose. You could do 20 hills or 10 with an old tire around your neck. And so it went, on and on, more hills and tires each time. I believe that hill out back was the steepness of a black diamond ski slope, and it was like 100 miles in length. I’d like to go back to that hill with a bulldozer and level it out just for pure spite. I hated that hill, and my over-familiarity with it bred contempt. It’s the most wearisome place in the whole world, and it’s the thirstiest as well.

As an adult, I’ve learned that physical tiredness isn’t the worst kind of weariness. There’s an emotional exhaustion that fastens itself onto different seasons of life, and as a pastor, I’ve walked with many people through those depleted times. The reasons vary, but the need presents itself in the same symptoms. Sometimes I’ve been with people whose spouses have given up on them and gone to be with someone else. Sometimes I’ve been with parents whose child was very sick. Sometimes I’ve been with families who just lost someone after decades of having them around – counting on them to always be there. Sometimes it’s been a battle with an addiction, a malignant presence in someone’s life that they knew was killing them but they couldn’t walk away from it. Of course, I have had my own seasons of tiredness brought on by a host of similar causes. Life can be hard, really hard, and some mornings it can be hard to get out of bed and start up again as if you are staring at a steep hill with a tire around your neck.

There is some good news, however. God understands our tiredness, our thirst, our pain. He doesn’t just look from on high with a paternal kind of sympathy. He understands us from inside our skin. That is what the incarnation is all about. Christians believe that God the Son put on flesh and came to live among us. He didn’t just impersonate one of us, looking like one of us but not really being one of us. As he put on flesh, he limited himself to the existence of a human being with flesh on. What that means is that when we are facing particular things that vex us and exhaust us, he understands us as one who had his own reasons for exhaustion.

Did Jesus know what it was like for people to give up on him? Ever hear of Judas Iscariot? Did Jesus know what it was like to lose someone close to him? Ever hear of Lazarus? Did Jesus face everything we face? No, not exactly, but in this he is like any other particular human being. None of us face everything possible that other human beings might encounter. I don’t believe that Jesus was ever addicted to anything, for instance. Even so, Hebrews 4:15 tells us that can sympathize with our weaknesses because he was “tempted in every way,” just as we are. He understands us because he truly became one of us. He even knows what it is like to face a steep hill with weight dragging him down on his neck, because he stumbled in exhaustion on the way up a hill to a cross. If I am running hills, literally or figuratively, I am not running alone, because he is with me helping me to face it.

It’s this Jesus, the one who knows us from inside our skin, that gives us an invitation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” When I am in that tired season, feeling like I am about to keel over from the emotional exhaustion, it’s these verses from Matthew 11 that have the power to keep me going. Whatever I face, hills or grief, or worry, or despondency, I don’t have to face it alone. To me, that makes all the difference.

Derek Russell is pastor of the Hillsboro Global Methodist Church. He loves Jesus, family, dogs and football.