Get With the Program!
Get With the Program!
Originally Posted Friday, August 15, 2008
I firmly believe that most people walk around with heavy burdens on their shoulders that no one knows about. They put on a plastic smile and pretend everything's fine. It could be a relationship that is struggling, a financial crisis, grief over the loss of a loved one, or a chronic illness that people aren't aware they have. I don't know where we learn to keep it all in and put up a brave front. Maybe we've heard that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, and we wrongly assume that means we should be able to handle it all by ourselves. Actually, God has created a perfect system for people to deal with the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in throughout our lives. We're just not using it.
First, He has told us to literally toss Him our burdens and let Him carry them around. I think that most Christians are aware that God has made this offer; the problem is, we just don't take Him up on it. Oh, we give it a try...sure. But we just don't trust that He's really capable of carrying it for us. So we take it back, thinking He needs our help. After all, we're not the only ones with problems out there. We forget that God is not bound by human limitations; He is all-powerful. As a person with a "fix-it" personality, I have tried to handle things on my own for years. I knew in my head that God could help me, but my heart said he needed back-up. So, I robbed myself of the experience of God being sufficient to carry me through life's trials.
But there's more to God's program. He knows what we're made of as humans because He was the one who created us. Knowing our fragile nature, He asked us all to participate in the burden bearing business with Him. If we know God, we are to be His hands and His feet. It's no coincidence we are called the "body of Christ." He actually instructed us to bear each other's burdens. But there is so little of that going on, right? You know why? Because we can't help others carry anything when our hands are full. We're all so busy walking around with a full load of our own burdens...things we don't trust God to handle...that we can't imagine taking on someone else's load. We've got to take that first step in the program of emptying out our own burdens on God in order to be part of His Official Burden-Bearing Team.
Recently, I myself struggled with the letting go part. I have a little bit of a scary health issue going on right now, in addition to all of the other ones that I've already been dealing with. For some reason, I decided to keep it to myself and not share it with my partner in life, my husband. My reasoning was that he already had so much on his plate with being in the busy season of our growing business and trying to care for me during this acute stage of my narcolepsy/cataplexy, that he didn't need to be given anything else to worry about. I was wrong. I was messing up God's system again. I was depriving my husband the joy of sharing in my burden and being a blessing to me by being there to love me, pray with me, and go through this trial with me.
Look around you. People you love are hurting. They are overloaded with burdens they can't carry on their own. Specifically, there are many people struggling with invisible illnesses...health issues that you probably don't know about because the person may appear to be fine. There are people fighting cancer, but they show up at work every day and sit in the pew behind you in church on Sunday. Your friend has rheumatoid arthritis, but you have no idea how much pain he's in. Your family member is grieving because she has been trying to conceive a child for years without success, but she still comes to your child's birthday parties, wishes you a happy father's day, and then goes home and weeps because she has no child of her own to tuck into bed at night. Most illnesses are invisible...especially if we're too weighed down by our own burdens to reach out and take notice that our loved ones are about to collapse with the weight their illness brings.
We need to be God's ears: listen to what people are saying; they may be trying to tell you they are hurting. We need to be God's eyes: notice that girl in your office that takes a lot of bathroom breaks and shows up late a lot of mornings; maybe she's not trying to get out of doing her share of work...maybe she has a health issue. It's okay to ask, "Is there anything you would like to talk about?" or "Is there something specific I can pray with you about right now?" or "I'm sorry you couldn't make it to the family get-together. Can I come by and show you the pictures I took there?" or "I know you're stuck at home a lot. Could I come by and get you and take you...." We all have to do our part for this program to work. Let go of your own burdens, give them to God, and ask Him to show you how you can carry a burden for somebody else.
