Carry each other’s burden; that’s the way to fulfill the Messiah’s law. [Galatians 6:2 (NTE)]
Since we tend to think of burdens as demanding and often unwelcome duties or responsibilities, we’re certainly not anxious to take on a burden, especially one that actually belongs to someone else! Yet, that is exactly what we’re told we must do if we are going to fulfill Christ’s mandate. And what is that command? To love one another in the way God loves us.
Nevertheless, the concept of carrying someone’s burden makes me think of beasts of burden like mules, donkeys, or oxen. I find it hard to associate the joy of Christianity with an image of myself as a pack animal lugging a heavy load for miles on rough terrain or an ox being poked with an ox goad while plowing a rocky field. Then again, recalling the Alaskan huskies kenneled just west of our favorite Colorado mountain town, I realize I might be thinking of the wrong beasts of burden.
For thousands of years, dogs like them have pulled people and goods long distances. Experienced mushers say that sled dogs are born loving to pull and it certainly seemed that way whenever we went dog sledding. When we arrived at their kennel, the dogs were quietly resting by their shelters or enjoying attention from their future passengers. Once the sleds and harnesses were taken from the storage shed, it was another story. The noise was nearly deafening as the dogs pulled at their chains and barked excitedly as if calling, “Take me!” While the teams were being harnessed and hooked up, the sleds had to be chained to posts to keep the eager dogs from pulling them out on the trail prematurely.
Mushers say teaching one of these dogs to pull is unnecessary—just put on a harness, hook him up, and the dog will do the rest! We barely needed to say “mush” to get them moving and it’s almost impossible to hold them back once they get started. For sled dogs, carrying a burden is joy rather than a chore; carrying one another’s burdens should be that way for a Christian, as well.
A non-believer tends to react to other people’s burdens the way a poodle would to the sight of a heavily loaded sled. Unlike a husky, it probably would whine about the cold and snow and resist being harnessed. If you managed to harness up a poodle, it probably would lie down and refuse to move and, if you ever got a team of them harnessed and moving, they’d certainly find no joy in running across the frozen tundra pulling a sled. Poodles probably can’t understand why huskies enjoy mushing but the love of sledding isn’t in their breeding. Non-believers can’t understand a Christian’s willingness to carry another person’s burden either but that’s because they’re not reborn in Christ. Rather than a genetic predisposition, it’s the Holy Spirit who enables us to love others enough to willingly and joyfully carry their burdens.
When thinking of those dogs so eager to pull us through the mountains, I realize that even substantial burdens can be borne without great difficulty, especially when it’s a team effort. Indeed, the burdens of our brothers and sisters are meant to be shared and, when shared, they cease to be a heavy load for anyone. For the Christian, carrying one another’s burdens isn’t a chore; it’s a privilege and a joy. One musher described his team this way, “They just live their life the way they love to live it…a life that they can be proud of.” Shouldn’t the same be said of us?
Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world. [Albert Schweitzer]
Intercessory prayer simply is praying on behalf of others and we find it throughout Scripture. After Israel’s shameful behavior with the golden calf, for example, Moses interceded for a sinful people before an angry God who was ready to wipe them out. The man pled for mercy rather than condemnation. Later, he interceded for his sister Miriam when God struck her with leprosy after her opposition to Moses’ leadership. When the Israelites again rebelled, refused to enter Canaan, and talked of choosing another leader to take them back to Egypt, Moses again interceded for the Israelites.
When Robert Louis Stevenson was just a boy, he was gazing out the window one evening and saw the lamplighter lighting the street lights. The future poet is reported to have said, “Look, Nanny! That man is putting holes in the darkness.” While it makes for a good sermon illustration, a more accurate version of his words is found in an essay he wrote in 1878, “A Plea for Gas Lamps,” in which the man expressed his opposition to the “ugly blinding glare” of the electric lights that were beginning to replace the gas lamps of Edinburgh. After asking God to bless the lamplighter, the poet described him as “speeding up the street and, at measured intervals, knocking another luminous hole into the dusk.” The lamplighter, said Stevenson, “distributed starlight, and, as soon as the need was over, re-collected it.”
Since we’ll be held accountable for our words, I wondered how many words that might be. In 1984, Gyles Brandreth claimed that by the time a typical American dies, he (or she) will have uttered more than 860 million words. Since Brandreth is an actor, writer, and Scrabble fanatic rather than a scientist, his number seems questionable. In 2006, Louann Brizendine claimed that women speak an average of 20,000 words per day while men speak a mere 7,000. Based on her numbers, in a lifetime of seventy years, women would have to account for over 511 million words while men would answer for about 179 million. While Brizendine’s qualifications as a neuro-psychiatrist lend credence to her statements, she provided no source for her statistics. Skeptical of her lopsided numbers, psychology professor James Pennebaker conducted a systematic study in 2007 that recorded the daily conversational word output of both men and women. He found that women averaged 16,215 words a day and men 15,669. Based on his numbers, both men and women will speak well over 400 million words in a seventy-year lifetime.
Avoid foolish controversies, arguments about genealogies, quarrels, and fights about Moses’ Teachings. This is useless and worthless. [Titus 3:9 (GW)]
Devotions of the Heart 