Light and easy

“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.” – Jesus Christ

I heard a joke.  How do you create a small company?  Answer: Over-regulate a big one and wait a few years!

[Good one, eh?  I'll wait for you to catch your breath.]

Bureaucracies have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be, don’t they?  A free-market economy, for instance, offers people wide-open opportunity to pursue their financial dreams, creating goods and services – and jobs – in the process.  And open-market competition protects consumers from pricing excess.  (“She's charging you a dollar?  I'll do it for 98 cents!”)  When constraints are imposed through administrative overreach, however, costs and prices rise while risk-taking and employment dwindle.  And somewhere a golden goose detects its doom! 

As much as we bemoan the burdens that arise from regulatory excess, we do the same thing to ourselves in a spiritual sense.  Don’t believe me?  Ask yourself these two questions:  Does Jesus’ yoke feel easy to me?  Does Jesus’ burden feel light to me?  If you could not answer “yes,” at least you have plenty of company.  We might share a new one-liner:  How do you create a heavy burden?  Answer: Take Jesus’ light one and wait a few days!  [OK, so we’re not laughing this time.]

So what happened?  How did easy bog down into difficult?  How did light expand into heavy? 

When Jesus walked the earth, his daily agenda was clear: he said only what the Father told him to say and did only what the Father told him to do.  He listened for his instructions and simply obeyed them.  We, on the other hand, tend to over-regulate ourselves; we add our own agenda items to God's to-do list.  And so our yokes become burdensome.  

So here are a few suggestions that might help us live “light and easy.”  Instead of dreaming up what we want to do for God, let’s limit ourselves to what God wants to do through us.  (No worries; there will be plenty.)  Rather than doing everything ourselves, let’s trust God also to work through others as he has called and gifted them to do.  And why not try this: take a blank calendar, schedule Bible and prayer time with God on each day, and then – and only then – fill in the rest of our schedules. 

One more thing.  Believe.  Read how much God loves you and believe him.  Read how Christ has made you one with him and believe him.  Read that Christ lives in you and believe him.  Read about how he has completely forgiven you and believe him.  Read about the power of Christ working in and through you and believe him.  Read how he goes with you and believe him. 

For when we simply trust God and then obey his directives in faith, his yolk is actually joyful and his burden, an honor.

[Click here to read the daily devotional in Matthew 11:25-30.]