September 28, 2012
I’m Carrying Whose Burden?
Recently a woman
asked the prayer chain for prayers to stop the progression of a disease, but
the qualifier was, “She wishes to remain
anonymous, but God know who this woman is.” We sometimes use that same
thought in worship services when we take public prayer requests and then the
speaker adds the caveat that if you can’t express your request out loud to the
congregation it’s OK because God still knows your need. Certainly we would all
agree that God knows our needs, but I can only imagine what the Apostle Paul
would have to say about anonymous burdens. “Carry
each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
(Gal 6:2 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----One of the more useful mental techniques I learned early, and have used most of my life, is that every action or condition or state of being or such as that are not either completely this way or completely that way. In fact, very few things in this twisted life are entirely one concept or its opposite. Almost everything is somewhere between the two extremes. And usually it is the circumstances of the instance which define the degree to which way or the other a concept extends.
-----Carrying each other’s burdens is about love. Love is one of the basic elements of spiritual life. So it is that the Lord has told us to love everyone, even your enemy. Satan is an enemy. Love him? Certainly not in the sense of participation. All associational aspect of love is inoperative towards Satan. We participate in the Lord. But what about desiring the best for him? Part of love is desiring what is good for another. In maybe a stretched sense of the term, ok. God defines what is good. And God does only what is good. God is going to quarantine Satan to a place entirely his own with no presence of God whatsoever. That’s good for God and everyone who loves Him. I have no idea how Satan feels about it, or if it is good for him. For love is also about the good feeling in the loved one as God defines good. (Are you getting the sense that love is inseparable from truth?) There is maybe only one tiny way I might consider loving Satan as an enemy is proper. It would be the only true thing I could think and feel towards him in regards to good - a wish that he had not rebelled and was not headed for Hell. Hope for him is not true, so only a wish can be. And I carry that burden, even though as a feeling it’s content is only fictional.
-----What burden could I carry for the enemy who lives next door? Since he has a prospect of salvation (I don‘t consider any brother in the Lord an enemy, although some consider me as theirs,) I could carry the burden of anything that might enlighten him to choose it. Or many other burdens. I could feed his cat if it has gone hungry. I could feed him if he’s gone hungry. I could pray for him if we’ve both gone hungry (Barrack Obama is leading in the polls.) And if neither of us have gone hungry and are doing quite well (the polls may be wrong,) then my love for my enemy would express itself as the general ambition for his well being relative to the truth of what God sees to be his needs. So I could do for him that which God supplies me to do, pray for that which I am not supplied to do, and simply pray for his good regarding his needs which I do not know. Each is a doing of love.
-----So that kind of general prayer is proper. And if one who needs prayer wishes to not be known, no impropriety has been made. Although I believe there is a participatory aspect to prayer, I also know that Jesus healed the Centurion’s daughter form afar, not even seeing her, and a lady was healed by touching His robe, and people lined the streets for Peter’s shadow to merely fall upon them. But in these mundane days, it does seem to us that the more the praying one knows of the situation, the more effective will be his prayers.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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