Take These Hands, Teach Them What To Carry

Talking this morning to my friend Christine, we were talking about balance and how difficult it is to keep up with all the expectations that are on us (that we take on ourselves). We have schoolwork, and friendships, and ministry opportunities, and laundry to do, and food to cook, and dishes to do, and prayers we should pray, and a need for sleep, and for service, and for exercise. And we should go to chapel, and study Lithuanian, and have people over for dinner, and talk to others about Jesus, and write emails to friends who love us and who we feel we’ve neglected, and prepare for Bible Study, and plan good lessons, and take the time to have meaningful conversations, and sing in choir, and think about clearing out some of those old sins, and plan Christmas parties, and put things on the calendar and…

The simple command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” becomes a juggling act as we try to figure out how to organize our time so we can love God, love ourselves, and love our friends. Those words of Jesus come to mind, when he said, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Was he kidding? There is so much to carry in this Christian walk, we feel like we’re staggering up a path, trying to carry a million things with our own strength. There is a U2 song (“Yaweh”) in which the cry to God is to, “take these hands, teach them what to carry.” Maybe we feel like we’re carrying so much because we have decided to pick up and carry things that we aren’t supposed to. Maybe God doesn’t ask us to carry a lot of the things that we think we should.

We can’t carry the future, and yet we walk around with tomorrow’s duties weighing down our heads like bricks. We try to carry the past, not letting go of sins, memories and habits that are heavy. We try to carry the emotions and needs of others, when we cannot be responsible for them anyway. We think we have to carry the past, the present, and the future – and as time-bound creatures, we can’t possibly do this.

When Jesus talks about His burden being light, I wonder if it is because when Jesus was with people, He was fully present to them in that moment. He focused His attention completely upon that person – whether it was Nicodemus, or the women at the well in Samaria, or Pilate. In the moments He had on earth, Jesus did not walk around in a state of stressed-out-ness, trying to love everyone simultaneously. And if anyone could have managed that, it would be Him! Rather, He loved people one at a time, with intentionality and purpose in the moment as it presented itself.

We try to carry too much. Humans can barely carry the weight of a single moment of time. The atoms of an instant are just about the limit of our strength. “Take these hands, teach them what to carry.” And importantly, too, I have to learn what not to carry.