Lighten Up A Little!

I just moved my extension ladder to Salina.  It has a warning label on it that reads: "Warning!  Weight capacity 180 pounds."  That label is a problem for me.  It is real hard to paint a house, ten feet off the ground, balanced on one leg.

My rowboat has a label that reads:  "Warning!  Capacity 3 adults or 350 pounds."   Tom Thumb, Tinkerbelle, and Gary Coleman couldn't go fishing together in that boat!  I have a choice to make.   I can take my lunch, my tackle box, or my thirteen-year-old granddaughter, but not all three.  It is a good thing that she doesn't like fishing.  

The elevator at the hospital says: "Capacity restricted to 18 individuals or 1,500 pounds."  I've never ridden an elevator with an entire village of Smurfs before.  But when the elevator starts beeping, and the doors refuse to close, I know who will have to get out.  I'm going to jump out of that elevator, hear the doors slam shut behind me, and watch that elevator sling shot to the top floor at one hundred miles and hour!

At times, my best friend has suggested that I do something about my weight.  She isn't amused when I insist that I am doing something about it.  "Adding to it," she mutters.   "Just for that," I snap, "I'm not going to take you fishing!"

I don't need anybody adding to my load; my load is heavy enough.  But some people have the audacity to attempt to increase my weight.  Jesus is one of those audacious people. 

In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says "Come to me if you are heavy laden and I will give you rest."  I have a heavy load and I need some rest, so that sounds good.  

But Jesus isn't finished with His statement.  "Take my yoke upon you," He says, "and you will find rest for your soul" (MT 11:29).  I know what a yoke is.  It is a heavy beam used to harness beasts of burden to an even heavier wagon or plow.  I don't need any additional weight.  My ladder is already sagging, and my boat is about to sink.  What Jesus says next further confuses the weight transference issue: "For my burden is easy and my yoke is light" (MT 11:30).

How do you add to your weight and get lighter?  How do you take another's burden and lose personal weight?  This is a difficult passage that requires a little thought.  Maybe what Jesus asks us to do is like strapping on a hang glider.  There is a brief additional weight equally distributed across the shoulders, and then a mysterious lift as the wind blows through the wings.  There is an increased weight followed by an uplift.  By taking Christ's load, our own load gets supernaturally lifted.  Adding some weight in our spiritual life must actually reduce our load in life.

This weight exchange principle must be true, because I know that Jesus personally carried a heavy load.  Like a yoke, the weight of His cross was distributed across His shoulders for a time.  Then there was a sudden supernatural uplift, and Christ was suspended above the earth.  The weight that had pressed Him down was now lifting Him.  The heavy yoke lifted Jesus, and Jesus lifted the weight of sin for every individual who would ever live.  In carrying His burden, He made me light.  I praise Him for all He has done for me.