When things get tough ...

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"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened ...

... and I will give you rest. 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."

Seems to me that there are three things to consider in this Bible text:

1) Jesus was brought up as a son of a carpenter and probably would have made yokes for customers. He would have known that it was important for the fit to be right - the easiest yoke to carry would be one that had been made specially for you.

2) A yoke works best when it is equally balanced. If one bucket is full and one is empty, then the yoke is no good at all and you would be advised just to carry one bucket!

3) Jesus was saying that the current yoke that the people were using was heavy but that he was offering an easier way of going through life.

So what do I do with these thoughts:

1) Jesus takes a personal interest in my life. What I go through, he can tailor-make to fit me.

2) It is important to review the balance in my life:

• work and play
• adventure and stability
• old and new
• faith and sight
• noise and silence
• movement and stillness
• looking back and looking forward
• joy and sadness
• doing and being

3) The world around us always seems to be adding to the responsibilities, decisions, burdens that we have to carry. Returning to Jesus unburdens us and gives us back perspective, lightening the load.

This is a picture of a London water carrier by the artist Lauren, which is the best picture I could find to demonstrate what I mean.