I was reminded by a friend recently of a favorite bumper sticker (seen several years ago): "Life is simple.  Doesn't mean it is easy."  This in turn reminded me of a maxim of Fred Rogers (whose conference Jess and I look forward to attending in mid June): "Modern life is shallow and complex.  Spiritual life is as deep as it is simple."  

It is with principles like this in mind that we share the following article (NCL 1954) entitled "Casting Burdens on the Lord."  May it inspire remembrance of the promise the Lord makes with each of us that He will bear us up as we shoulder our burdens, as if of ourselves but in His Strength.

Love and Peace,

Ethan 

"Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you" is the invitation and assurance given through the Psalmist. It may scarcely seem necessary to point out that what the Lord promises here is to support us, not to take up our burden for us; except in the sense that we can endure the spiritual burdens of life only [as if] of ourselves but from the Lord. 

Yet while some Christians have perceived this and have acted accordingly, others seem to feel that when they have laid a burden at the Lord's feet they are free from all responsibility for it. Henceforward it is God's concern, and the responsibility for decision and action entirely God's.

It is true that the Lord bears our spiritual burdens in that it is the Lord alone who fights for us against the hells. Yet He does not so carry them as to lift them entirely from our shoulders, but upholds by giving us the wisdom and the strength to endure. The Divine Providence never operates in such a way as to absolve a person from the responsibility of exercising those faculties of rationality and liberty in which the human [experience] truly consists. 

Neither by immediate revelation nor by manifest indications of Divine Providence will the Lord tell or show us what to do so directly and unmistakably that there is no need for thought, reflection, and decision on our part. Nor will He so dispose events that all our problems will be solved without vigorous and decisive action on our part.

The Lord sustains us, not by lifting our burdens, but by bearing us up as we shoulder them as if of ourselves but in His strength. The influx of His sustaining power is into our efforts to learn, understand, and do the spiritual truth of His Word. That was what He meant when He said: "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." When the burden thus becomes the Lord's it is easy to be home.