Cast Your Burden

There are times when we need to be reminded of things. We have a loving Saviour who wants to bear our burdens, if only we let him. For whatever reason we are hanging on to the burdens, they are only making our lives harder to live. All we have to do is cast our burden onto the Lord.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, 

and he shall sustain thee: 

he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. 
Psalm 55:22

Visiting my family up in the North of England is always a treat. I only get to see them two or three times a year so it is always a special time being with them all. An added bonus is I get to visit my childhood church while I'm there too. 

While there several years ago, I told the preacher and an elder about a tract I had been given about 30 years ago. The church was having an outside ministry and I was handed a tract. When I told the girl, "it's ok, I'm a Christian, give it to someone who needs it", she assured me it was for me. And she was right! Those were the words I needed to hear to remind me just how much I mattered to God.

That morning, the preacher's sermon was on a similar theme about how the Lord cares for us. In his message he talked about casting your burdens on the Lord and mentioned the story about the man who was carrying a very heavy load. He couldn't remember all of the story just that the man had continued to hold onto his load, and he used this as an illustration as to how we can be with the Lord.

When I got back to mam's after the service I was looking through some old photographs and came across a letter or rather little booklet my sister in Texas had typed and sent to my mam back in 2004. The booklet was newspaper style and gave my mam an insight into what my sister and her family were doing in their recent move to Texas. I couldn't quite take my eyes off the back page because it relayed the story of the man carrying the heavy load. 

"A poor man in Ireland was plodding along toward home, carrying a huge bag of potatoes. A horse and wagon finally drew up alongside him on the road and the driver invited the man to climb aboard. After getting on the wagon, he sat down but continued to hold the heavy bag.

When the driver suggested that the man set the bag down in the wagon, he replied, "I don't want to trouble you too much sir. You are giving me a ride already, so I'll just carry the potatoes".

I love to see God's hand at work like this and I realised the Lord was trying to tell me something. I'd had a few worries and anxieties about some things and I'd spoken to the Lord about them. Each day I got up, I clung onto those worries and of course they just became a burden to me again and again. Even though I'd given it to the Lord I was like the man with the potatoes - I just hung onto my anxieties day after day.

The Lord was trying to tell me that once I had passed these anxieties onto Him I was to simply let him deal with them and not to be like the man with the bag of potatoes. It was amazing how easy it finally was to just let the Lord take my burdens and I certainly felt the worry I was bearing becoming lighter.

It reminded me too that sometimes we don't realise the things we write can have a ripple effect. We write them only for that moment in time when we put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard but the Lord can use the very words we write several years down the line to speak to someone else. I'm sure my sister didn't realise when she wrote those words in her notes to mam that her big sister would be reading them seven years later and having her prayers about a certain situation answered.

If you're worried or troubled about anything think about the man with his bag of potatoes and let the Lord deal with the burdens. Peter puts its simply, Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (1 Peter 5:7)