AN EASIER BURDEN by John Upton If you are one of the following types of people, please feel free to read no further: your life is easy and reasonable, you never worry, you do not struggle or have any concerns, or you do not care much about anything. Should you be any one of these, you are free to read no further. Now, that leaves those of us who live with concerns, stresses, struggles, and burdens. It leaves those of us who get really, really tired of all of it. Thank you for reading on. Those of us reading on are the only ones in need of hearing these words again from Jesus in Matthew: “Come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly of heart. You will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Those are powerful words. They are almost haunting words, because they speak to the deep sighing in each of us—to the weariness of our burdened hearts. We do bear burdens, don’t we? We bear all kinds of heavy obligations—problems beyond us to solve. We have expectations difficult to meet, burdens of regret, burdens of guilt, the burdens of other people’s hurts, and the burden of longing for some sense of completion and fulfillment that eludes us. Jesus does not name the burden or describe the weariness. He just says, “Come to me.”
JOHN UPTON is Executive Director of the BGAV.
To be honest, sometimes we really do not want the rest Jesus offers. We prefer our overly burdened life. Maybe it is a safe place to hide. Besides that, Christ’s invitation is often drowned out by all the other voices saying carry the weight! Carry all those expectations, obligations, resentments, fatigue, the weight of your own importance, and your burden of guilt. And hey—there is a prize for the person who carries the heaviest load. That is religion for you. Yet there stands Christ, saying your life was not meant to be this kind of tired. “Come to me, let me give you rest.” We ask, “How do I do that? What rest?” His answer is surprising, “Take my yoke on you.” What? Isn’t a yoke the very symbol of tiresome labor? Burdened, he says, get under my yoke. Whatever Jesus means by rest, it does not seem to mean inactivity. When Jesus says to get under his yoke, it sounds like permission and encouragement to stop carrying the baggage we pile on ourselves and other people pile onto us. Lay all that baggage down. You can straighten your back and breathe. Doesn’t that feel good? If it is his yoke, what is it we carry? It is the burden of love. It is the burden of God’s love for all the world and for us. That is an awfully heavy weight, isn’t it? The weight of that burden is immensely heavier than all our baggage of false burdens put together. God’s love outweighs the universe. Yet, Jesus says it is an easy yoke and the burden is light. Why? Because this is not the yoke for one set of shoulders. Christ is under it. To take his yoke is to be in his strong, glad company and in the strong, glad company of so many others. I’ll tell you what really rests on our shoulders; it is the hand of God on our lives. I find that a restful thought, don’t you? Christ’s own hand is on our shoulder. December is the perfect month to be reminded of this. Like Mary, what we carry is a burden of joy. Now, let us carry that!
