November 30

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For My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:30

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🔊 When my children were little they would often want to join in what my wife or I were doing – genuinely believing they could be of enormous help. As a father, it never seemed right to discourage even their slightest desire to help. On one occasion, I was carrying a heavy piece of wood, and my 3 year-old son offered to help me carry it. He bravely took hold of one end of the piece of wood. He held on to it so tightly that, as I lifted the wood, his feet left the ground, and I was carrying him along with the wood! How easily we think we are carrying really heavy burdens on our shoulders. We go about our business with such a serious expression, and the furrows on our brow are quite genuine. But the burdens that God lays on our hearts are not like burdens that crush and destroy. When He lays a burden on one of His children, it actually ‘carries’ us, and motivates us to do things that were formerly beyond our power. The burdens God shares with us shape our character and make us into people of compassion. Strangely, this kind of burden doesn’t make our steps heavier, but lighter. We find ourselves running to prayer, running to help others, with an energy and drive that we never had before, and part of it is the sheer delight of partnership with God. Jesus finds running the moral, spiritual and physical universe a sheer delight, and He wants to share that delight with us.