the light yoke

The snow has fallen many times this winter.  We’ve had four winter storms in just over four weeks — not little storms, but large snowfalls exceeding 8inches at a pop.  And with it? Dark skies.  Overcast.


Where is the sun?


The sun has become lost in a blanket of clouds — to the point where my little Elijah wonders if it’s truly morning. This lack of sunshine wears me out.  


Where is the light?

There are seasons in life where everything is dark and dismal.  Perhaps it’s finances, or health, relationships, or just the daily grind of life.  Here there back and forth move move move.  It is difficult in the midst of trials to look beyond the present reality and set of circumstances.  Society and human nature can apply pressures to our lives at an unrelenting pace so that after awhile the future seems to be tainted a dismal and cloudy gray.

In the NIV I believe labor is replaced with the word – weary.  Oh, how true those words of Jesus are for us today. Especially now at Christmas time we can seem to labor endlessly — dishes, laundry, phone-calls, email, cleaning, driving, teaching, cooking, preparing, and on and on and on.   Our work doesn’t cease when the skies of life become overcast, no…we simply press forward.  And yet, after awhile, if we only wear the yoke of the world we’ll burn out. I’ve done it.  So many times.  I was simply wearing the wrong yoke and “too busy” to replace it with the light yoke. Or I was too full of my own pride that I didn’t want to let go…

Jesus tells us to come to Him.   In Him is true rest.  I always chuckle when I think about a yoke being called easy.  When is it easy to be constrained?  But, when I read these words I don’t picture life with Jesus being constrained…rather in yoking myself to my Savior I know there is real freedom even in the midst of overcast and weary days.

Who knows when the skies here will finally part and the sun will shine?  I know it’s under there, waiting to shine.  I have faith that there will be sun again.  I also have faith that our Savior is always there, wanting us to release our fears and anxieties to Him and that He will give rest.  A rest that cannot be found in self or in this world, but a rest that is sweet and peaceful…in any weather…in any season.