September 28, 2007
Burden Lite
I think some of the things I consider to be burdens wouldn’t be a burden if it weren’t for the fact that I’m a Christian. There are times I just get weary of playing by Bible rules and I’d like to ignore the ‘do unto others’ stuff. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:29 -30 NIV) I suppose Jesus does have a point. Certainly my soul is at rest. Now if I could just find rest for the rest of me!
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Gail;
-----A lot of people get tired of life and give some degree of serious contemplation to suicide as a solution. I did almost thirty years ago. In fact, last weekend in my storage shed, I came across the bullet I was ready to chamber up that afternoon. I remember clearly why I kept that bullet. My choice to not pull the trigger was not made because I wanted to continue living and try again to find a sense of satisfaction with life. It was made because my Mother was still not responding to my brother’s death two and a half years earlier. I figured my death by suicide would push her over the edge. I was not willing to do that to her, at least not yet. I kept that bullet to remind me over the next five years that I was to either succeed at overcoming my manic-depression, or chamber it up and use it.
-----I never did fully acquire a taste for this life. But I did discover the secret to my mental and emotional states and I learned how to be joyful, if not happy. And I discovered a very useful insight. I realized what Jesus spoke of in taking up our cross, what Paul wrote of dying daily, and Peter of dying to sin was an actual separation from the perception of needs, demands, and desires felt by the self, and a separation from the understanding of all things I had held to that day. After that separation I was then ready to mentally reassess those needs, demands, desires, and understandings according to Biblical principles, rejecting what failed to correspond with the truth, and accepting what did correspond.
-----I learned that in the distance from emotions caused by needs, demands, and desires there was peace and rest. Absent from the stress of the struggle to achieve fulfillment, there was the willingness to accept the truth about myself and life, the willingness to accept the fact that others existed and felt things as deeply as I, who perceived needs to be as important to them as I perceived them to be to me, and whose every heartbeat was being felt by God. I understood that afternoon that I could also be felt by God by the effect I had upon those hearts around me.
-----When I looked at that bullet again, I realized what it is to die to myself and live to Christ. I realized that I was the slave master, not God, and that in the distance from my demands I had rest in Him. I realized that the hearts of the people around me were a canvass upon which I could paint a picture for Him to enjoy, whether it be huge or tiny. And I noticed that those hearts would become cheerfully colorful at even a sincere attempt to please, or, to even acknowledge them. If I wanted to touch Him, all I had to do was to touch them. Entertaining God no longer had to be by making some sort of elaborate and successful structure of my own life. It could also be by a simple stroke of someone nearby.
-----Even though I continued to feel the importance of building and growing my life in the Lord, guarding it and cleaning it where it gets filthy, and repairing it where it gets tattered, I also could feel excused by His mercy for my failures. So, I no longer have the need to look away from my failures and make big of my sanctity. I understand my failures as the baggage that is to be lost at the airport, and I am satisfied that they are tagged for oblivion. So now when my body gets a bit steamless, my responsibilities a bit too heavy, or my emotions overly blah, I remember that bullet and know that by His choosing and His motion He is going to take me and any cheerful colors I’ve made, and leave what baggage I haven‘t already been able to loose.
-----I hold the Bible up in my hands and know that I will never on this side of departure be anything near what its principles call perfect behavior to be. But I know that through the truth it speaks about what He was, is, and will be I can understand the truth about what I was, am, and will be. And I know I can receive glimpses of that truth only when I am able to treat a person beside me according to it. So, I don’t know, Gail, if I ever get weary of playing Bible rules. I never really thought of it that way. But I do get weary of not playing by the rules, which in some large or small manner here or there, I always seem to keep doing.
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