What load are you carrying that makes life more difficult than you would like it to be? Is it created by worry and anxiety? Do your mind and heart roam to the past, burdening you with regrets? Do your mind and heart wander to the future and fill you with thoughts of disasters or unsolvable situations?
Each of us carries some sort of burden, small or large, and the invitation from the Gospel has some wisdom about how to deal with those burdens. We are invited to come to Jesus with those burdens, take on His yoke, and we are promised that we will find rest in Him if we do what He asks us to do.
To follow the wisdom the Gospel offers this weekend, we have to acknowledge that we carry burdens. It helps to name them and to allow them to be part of our consciousness rather than pushed away into the darkness of our unconscious. As we acknowledge our burdens, it is important to do some honest reflection about the kinds of burdens that we carry and why we carry them.
Are the burdens that we carry about things that we can’t control? From the Serenity Prayer, we learn that there are some things we control and some we don’t. It is essential to recognize the difference and to let go of the things that we have no control over. Most of us have learned that manipulation and coercion have no lasting value in trying to change ourselves or others. Is it possible to stop those practices in our lives and acknowledge that some things in life are out of our control?
Putting on the yoke of Jesus may seem like an extra burden to take on, but let’s examine that for a moment. If we are yoked to Jesus, we are with Him in closeness, grace and relationship. He promises that if we remain close to Him, He will remain close to us. When He is close to us, we experience more abundance. He offers us peace and hope that is generated through our experience of His faithfulness and love.
In this coming week, what practices will you begin in your life that will allow you to come to Jesus as He has invited us? Will you be able to come to Jesus without trying to control Him? Will you be able to come to Jesus honestly with all of your mistrust and cynicism? Will you be able to come to Jesus with any amount of hope? Will you be able to come to Jesus on His terms and not your own? Is it true that we have to hit the gutter before we are willing to change our lives, or might we be able to do that before something destructive happens to us?
The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God’s word and promise are absolutely trustworthy. Will we trust enough to follow Him, to come to Him and to yoke ourselves to Him?
Father Wester is pastor of All Saints Parish in St. Peters.