I once carried a burden...

I once carried a burden. It was the sum mount of my convictions, my responsibilities, my sacrifices, my duties, my calling. It was this massive heavy heap that I carried, convinced it was my lot- my God-given assignment to bear. It was excrutiating and I knew it. It was killing me and I could feel it.

My spirit was cracking under the extreme weight of it all, but how could I cave? This was what I believed to be the summit of life. This is what it meant to follow Him. Yes it hurts. Yes it's killing me and crushing me. But isn't it supposed to? Isn't that the point? We follow Him, we serve Him, till we are reduced to dust and ashes for His glory?

Well that's what I thought. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. It's not supposed to be easy. Right?

Right?

Was that bit about "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.", was that just a joke? Or was that true and I'm just not there yet? Am I just so in the way, so displeasing to You, so undeserving, that I'm just not ready for light and easy? Or maybe I'm just too weak and I need to be stronger and then it will be easy and then it will feel light. Yes! I must be stronger. It's my fault. Forgive me Lord for being so weak and selfish.

One day a man of God came to where I was living and working and he instructed us to go out and find an object that we felt like we were supposed to bring to the service He was arranging for us. For reasons unknown to me I brought a car tire. When I came into the room I found that he had created a wall of chairs, a barrier of sorts, and we were going to climb over it using our object. I thought it over and over and all I could figure was that the tire symbolized for me to keep going, that the tire was my part that I was to carry. So I heaved the tire up, held it over my head, and began to take the hard steps to cross the barrier. But it was heavy. My arms began shaking, my knees began to buckle. I'm struggling not only to hold it up, but to stand firm and not tumble over. I begin praying, "God I'll keep going and I'll do my part because I'm not it..." I'm on the edge of breaking, telling myself to be stronger crying out, "Your yoke is easy and your burden is light." as if saying it will somehow defy the laws of weight and gravity and alter the makeup of this burden and/or my abilities....

And then the man of God came over to me and said, "This is too heavy for you to carry and you're strong so you'll grit your teeth and do it, but wheels are made to carry and you just need to roll with it." So I started over. I climbed back down the barrier and faced it again, but this time I simply rolled the tire to the other side, not up and over mind you, but on the ground where it should be. And then I felt free to plainly climb over the barrier. It felt easy and it felt light.

I wish to God I could understand why we do this to ourselves. Why we make light things heavy and easy things hard. Why we make it impossible for us to be well. Why we think life is always about dying and love always about denial. I wish I could understand why we take tires and carry them instead of letting them carry us. I wish I could understand why we hear words like, "try harder" but we are deaf to words like, "rest" and "easy". I wish to God I knew why myself and my kin are such damn masochists; why we hurt ourselves and insist that it's godliness.

I wish there was a clear enemy to blame. I've tried blaming the Church. I've tried blaming pastors and leaders. I've tried blaming religion and culture. I've tried blaming the devil and I've tried blaming myself. And every time I come up lacking and unsatisfied. I have only found that there is no justice down that path, no resolution to be found there.

So without knowing why, I simply know that we do. We do this to ourselves and call it God.

We have been convinced that faith merits grace when grace is in fact the current upon which faith is simply carried. We, in so many ways, are like little children carrying buckets down to the river, filling them up, only to carry them up hill, dump out the contents and repeat our arduous acts of penitence.

There is no trick. There is no catch. His burden is easy and His yoke is light. And if it is not my friend, then it is not His but your own that you carry.

Would you roll with it? Would you stop carrying the tide and let the tide carry you?