Thursday, April 28, 2011

Burdens, part 2

Even though the lifting of a burden is a beautiful thing, and certainly something that my God is known for His ability to do, not everything in our lives that could be described as a burden is dispensed with as quickly as one may, say, take off a heavy backpack. Of course, sometimes it is human foolishness in not giving those things up or not taking them to God, but that's not always the case.

Something in my life that is not what I would like it to be was described by a friend the other night as a burden. I don't know if I had thought of it in quite those terms. A pain, perhaps. A feeling. A confusion. A foolishness. This thing, I take it to God, repeatedly. I am tired and frustrated that it has not gone away. I think that I have cried quite enough tears about it by now.

What will happen with this in my life I do not know. I do know two things from Scripture that seem worth bringing up in relation to the concept at hand. One is that Paul himself was troubled with a something (he calls it a thorn in the flesh; I don't know what that was intended to refer to), and he prayed for it to be taken away, and received this answer: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9) And another is that Jesus' ability to sympathize with suffering is not limited by His knowledge of how soon it will end (see John chapter 11, especially verse 35 considered in context).

Something I really want to say before I end this thought is perhaps seen in the analogy of a walk. A few weeks ago I was literally taking walks in which my purpose was to spend time with God, thinking and praying about His will for me. I told someone this in conversation and said that, even if I was not necessarily getting the answers I was looking for yet, He was walking with me, and so they were good walks. I think the same is true here. I may not, in that area of my life, be what one could call happy, I may not understand what is going on, I may not know how it will be resolved. But I do know that God is walking with me.

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