We aren’t heavy...He’s our Father

   My younger readers (as in, not senior citizens) probably won’t get the joke here, so I’ll let you know there’s a song from the late 60’s called “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”  It’s been awhile since God made me laugh. I guess it’s part of my realignment (see New Years Chiropractic post). No one is funnier than God, and I miss His jokes when I don’t hear them.

   I was lamenting to God my burdensome nature of repeating the same cycle of sin in a particular area.  It seemed He always has to do the ‘heavy-lifting’ in my life for anything to change, despite my
best intentions. Brother Lawrence once said, “O Lord, this is what you may expect of me if you leave me to myself.”  Not that God did leave me to myself, per se. He prompted me before I spoke that critical word about an associate; I just ignored the prompting...repeatedly.  Daily repenting and heading into the day, I determined to put duct tape over my mouth but found it wasn’t quite as strong as touted, even with those fibers woven through it.

   Finally admitting complete defeat, I lay myself down in despair of ever changing. That’s when He told me, “It’s ok...you aren’t heavy; I’m your Father.”  Breaking into a loud guffaw followed by repeated outbreaks of laughter, I realized that He had used humor, once again, to break through my attempts at serious, teeth-gritting self-sufficiency.

   In this  partnership we have, He does all the heavy-lifting, His yoke easy and His burden light. It’s only an illusion on our part that we are holding up our end. Just as our fathers once let us ‘help’ them with a heavy object and we proudly assisted, thinking our strength was contributing to their success. As our fathers hopefully did, He is looking at us in tender love, encouraging us to give our very best in this partnership with the Creator of the universe. He doesn’t condescend or demean our efforts. Yet when our meager strength gives out and we fall down exhausted in our tracks trying to be good, He bends down and lifts us up and whispers, “It’s ok, I have you; you’re not heavy...”