“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.” Matthew‬ ‭11:28-30‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Prologue: I started writing this blog a few months ago: BC -before Coronavirus. And even though it is specific to personal challenges of the heart, it is reverberates to the concerns of today. We aren’t in control of any of the events in our lives….and as we as a world family continue to weather this storm – it’s as if God has stopped His whispering and begun shouting for us to trust Him and hand off the burdens we insist on carrying. 

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We were just talking. You know the easy kind of chat where one person says something and then goes quiet….and you sit there together in comfortable silence...you make no comment and then maybe they start talking again…to themselves and you have the benefit of hearing.

There’s stuff going on in my friend’s life, and to be honest, it’s the kind of stuff that seeps into the present from the bad stuff in his past…Brokeness, family issues and other dendrites that has resurfaced in his present. But you know what? Life has taught him that to hold on to deep bruises from the past is like putting stones in your pockets. It just weighs you down and makes it hard to carry-on.

And so as my friend was staring out into nothing and thinking about everything, he says out loud, “I just wish I could go back to that little guy in my life and tell him, ‘everything really is going to be OK.’ ”

My friend has finally learned that God’s got it under control even when it feels like he doesn’t, He does. 

I too have learned that lesson. So as I write this morning I want to remind us all- (no this is not a Pollyanna declaration of don’t worry be happy either.) It’s just a reminder that there’s so much that we are not in control of and if we truly believe in a God who is sovereign and trust in our hearts that what will be WILL BE then we need to realize that we must must let go of the stones that way us down…lest they become boulders that crush us.

I am guilty of carrying rocks in my pockets, and two nights ago I had a very disturbing dream.

I was sitting on a mammoth boulder which was rolled up in front of a cave in the side of a mountain. My heart was very sad and I was heavily crying. I was in my mind, rehashing all the things that have hurt me over the past several years. I remember feeling afraid and lost and stuck. I couldn’t get down.

Then as dreams will do I was suddenly off the boulder and it began to roll away from the cave opening on its own accord. Out of the cave came an explosive light. And then I woke up.

It took me a full day to realize what I was dreaming about.

I think that I was feeling so trapped in my own issues that I was not remembering who lives inside of me, the light of life, Jesus Christ. And when I could do nothing about my anxiety in the dream, He could and did. 

But God.

Trust is a choice. It’s an active verb. I can wrestle with God all night long and continue to fill up my own pockets with the burdens I carry or I can get off that boulder and let him roll it away from the grave of my anxiety.

It’s hard. But it’s harder still to carry weight that I am not meant to shoulder.

So in this epic time of world wide challenges – choose NOT to fill your own pockets with stones.

Amen and amen