“Thank you”, I said with relief, “but
I just needed to set the basket down. I’ve put too many things in as usual. I
should have got a trolley. It happens every time!”
“Ah I know,” the man replied sagely,
“there’s always something else we think we need.”
I loaded my apples and sausage rolls
and salads and frozen chips and soup tins and flowers and shortbread in a tin
with a pretty butterfly on the front to give to my mum, all onto the conveyor
belt and waited for my turn to pay. As I looked round vaguely at nothing in
particular, as you do in a shopping queue, my eye landed (as it is presumably
meant to do) on the packets of chewing gum hanging on a rack in front of me. ‘Lemon
mint gum, wonder what that tastes like,’ I thought to myself and reached out,
dropping a packet on top of the rest of my shopping.
“You’ve been tempted again then?”
said a voice to my right.
I laughed in surprise with a touch of
embarrassment, “Indeed yes I have!” I answered, “They got me again, I must be
an easy target.”
The man smiled pleasantly, a twinkle
in his eye and moved on with his newspaper and bottle of red wine, perhaps
anticipating a pleasant evening in front of the fire at home, doing the
crossword.
I joked with the lady at the till who
had been paying attention to the exchange, “Next thing you know I’ll be buying
that pet insurance and I don’t even have a dog!” pointing in the direction of
the leaflets displayed above the rows of chewing gum.
It was a brief, friendly exchange of
words amongst people going about their daily business, which produced a smile
and a thought. “There’s always something
else we think we need.”
A basketful of self-confidence,
success, self-esteem, educational achievement, job satisfaction, relational
fulfilment, happy, healthy kids, financial security, comfortable church life, material
possessions, recognition, acceptance, validation, respect, credibility, the
list could go on. It can be draining and downright exhausting heaving it all
around with us up and down the aisles of life and yet Jesus says ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light’.
There is a clear discrepancy between
what we often experience in life and these words recorded in Matthew 11:30. We
still have to carry something but what Jesus ‘burdens’ us with is light and
easy to lift. So does this then mean that we are in fact, carrying things that
he is not asking us to bear at all? Are there things that we think we need or
like the look of but which require a great amount of exertion to lift? I
have to ask myself, what am I picking up and why?
I suppose the word ‘yoke’ usually
evokes an agricultural scene of huge oxen with a heavy, cumbersome bar across their
shoulders, slowly dragging a plough across a field, an analogy which has never
really given me the understanding that I feel it should. It’s not the comfort
that I would like it to be or that I’m sure Jesus intended it to be. Until one
day I realised that there may be an alternative way to look at it. A yoke was also used to carry water. A bucket
on either side of a wooden yoke set across a person’s shoulders makes the job a
whole lot easier. Less strain presumably on the body, better balance and more
water carried in one trip. The idea of a yoke starts to make a little more
sense. The yoke of Jesus’ teaching and grace blesses us daily with living water
to carry home for ourselves and also to give to others. Perhaps the woman at
the well never drew water or carried it back home again without thinking of living
water, following her life changing conversation with Jesus. She took on his
yoke and found freedom from all the things which made life unbearable. Not only
that, the water she received, she gave to others.
Eugene Peterson translates the verse
as,
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away
with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of
grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me
and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Msg
There is so much more I have yet to
learn from just this one verse alone! Learning the unforced rhythms of grace,
learning to live freely and lightly, how to not keep piling my basket full of
things I don’t need. I’ve been listening for a while now, to the
podcasts of The Practice (http://www.practicetribe.com/), a community of people worshipping at
Willow Creek church, Illinois, who are committed to unpacking the meaning of Jesus’ words
in this verse, opening up every aspect of life to honest, open examination and learning
how to recover their lives. Their journey together is inspiring and encouraging. We constantly need the reminder to set down our heavy loads and instead spend time with the One who shows us what living life in freedom really looks like.
Life without the heavy basket. Sounds good to me!
‘With the subordination came increase of freedom’
George MacDonald, The
Castle: a parable
No comments:
Post a Comment