Wednesday 2nd Week of Advent

Gospel – Matthew 11:28-30

Share the Load!

Sharing a Moment

We all have our burdens; we are all weighed down with cares and stress and worries for ourselves, our family, and our world.  We all trudge through long days and sleepless nights, wondering when we will find a break from the load and relief from the hardships.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to bring our troubles to Him and He will give us rest.  Ok, sounds good.  But then He says to take on HIS yoke because His yoke is easy and light and we will find rest.  Seriously??  His yoke is easy?  Let go of my burden and take on His?  How is that gonna be any better?  Are we missing something here?  Well, of course we are!

Unlike Jesus’ followers, most of us lack simple farming experience; we simply don’t realize that a yoke is meant for TWO oxen!  And that is the crux of Jesus’ words today.  The yoke is not meant for one; it is meant for two to share the load.  The burden, no matter what it is, is not meant to be carried by yourself alone.  Jesus tells us that His yoke has room for one more person – YOU!  Jesus says to bring your worries to Him and let’s share the load.  And by sharing the weight, your burden becomes easier and lighter.

None of us have to carry our stresses and worries alone!  Share your burden with Jesus!  Share them with the people that God sends to you today, the ones who ask “how you are doing’ and ‘is there anything I can do for you’!  And conversely be that one Christ-like friend who lovingly offers to share the burden!

Creator, help us today to learn how to share – to share our burdens with those who care, to share Your Spirit with those who need a gentle voice and a supportive shoulder!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Feast of the Presentation Gospel – Luke 2:22-40 We Are Family Church of St. Joseph, Nazareth 5 extremely short stories to start the day! Once all the people in a village decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith. When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust. Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarm to wake up. That is hope. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence. We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love. Faith, hope, love, confidence and trust!   Sounds like a perfect list of values/virtues for a happy family! Today’s Gospel tells us of another family – the Holy Family going up to Jerusalem with the baby Jesus to present Him to the Lord in ...
Read more
Image
  Second Sunday of Easter   Gospel – John 20:19-31 Faith and Family Us Decades ago, when Jaime was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I was having some stomach issues, bad enough to spend some time in the hospital to figure out what was going on.   Finally, one morning, with Jaime and Ginger in the room, the doctor comes rushing in to tell me in these overly blunt words – you have cancer, we will perform surgery today and start you on chemo treatments tomorrow!   After I got over the initial shock, I basically had 2 reactions!   First, how dare you blurt out such a diagnosis with our little daughter in the room without even consulting us beforehand.   How disrespectful! How insensitive!   And secondly, my personal health, or lack thereof, was the last thing on my mind.   All that mattered to me was Ginger and Jaime and how all this would affect them! Some things never change!   Truth be told, after all that stress and worry, his diagnosi...
Read more
Image
Tuesday - Third Week of Easter Gospel – John 6:30-35 Knead to Know Cooking Class Over the past month or so, I gathered together a couple groups of my altar servers for a cooking class!   They learned not only my recipe for zucchini chocolate chip muffins but how to make them from scratch!   And, YES, they took home their finished products, or at least the muffins they didn’t wolf down as soon as they came out of the oven!   It was a fun, wonderful (and messy) experience!   Who knew that cracking eggs and measuring out flour could be so ‘untidy’.   But it brought home the lesson that, in order to get those yummy muffins, it takes time, effort and a heaping cup of patience. And it reminded me not only of their loyal service but those long months of Covid when they missed their Mass ministry.   So from time to time during the pandemic, I stayed in touch with them by dropping off goodie bags filled with chocolate chip cookies, zucchini chocolate ...
Read more