Restoration Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, February 1989

WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH OUR BURDENS?

There are three answers to this question in the Bible which appear to be incompatible:

Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you. (Ps. 55:22)
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:2)
For each person shall bear his own burden. (Gal. 6:5)

Logic and experience alike teach us that while each of these has an element of truth, each is also partly misleading and is not to be made to mean too much. None of us can bear his or her own burden alone as the last one instructs, for we are all dependent on many others in whatever we do. Even in getting my own job and paying my own way, I depend on a multitude of others for transportation, food, clothing, shelter, work, and all that we call life. No man is an island unto himself, as the poet assures us, and no one is wholly self-sufficient. That is why Paul may overstate his case when he says in Gal. 6:4, "then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another." It is hard to see how one can "rejoice in himself alone" whether he has baked a cake, scored a touchdown, preached a sermon, or been elected governor. If life teaches us anything at all it is that we not only need one another but must absolutely have one another.

And yet there is a sense in which we are to bear our own burdens and not be dependent on others. Sloth is named as one of the seven deadly sins, and we are by nature inclined to be indolent. We are tempted to be leaners, whether on our welfare state, our parents, or our friends. We may too often let the other fellow pick up the check and do more than his share of the work. Even amidst sorrow and sickness we may be too dependent on others. In old age we must resolve as strength allows to stand tall and self-reliant. We do not always have to be "once a man, twice a child" as Shakespeare insisted.

Sometimes the need to bear one's own burden becomes grimly evident, as in the story of the young man who deserted his widowed mother. He would not answer her letters or respond to the pleas of her minister. When the minister wired the boy that his mother was dying, the prodigal returned. When he entered her hospital room, the mother gave a fleeting smile of welcome and died. When the boy looked upon her still form and saw the traces of anguished worry in her countenance, he knelt beside her bed and shook the room with his sobs. It was a burden he had to bear alone.

It is noteworthy that "Bearing one another's burden" is not only an apostolic admonition but the law of Christ. This shows that Christ does have laws and that his followers are to honor them. That we can't be justified before God by law-keeping but only by grace does not mean that there are not laws to keep. The law of Christ in this context is probably the law of love, which we fulfill when we bear each other's burdens. It could also be seen as the law of friendship, for that is what it means to be a friend, lobe there when one is needed. The best definition of friend that I have seen is this: "A true friend is one to whom you can tip out all of the contents of your heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest hands will take and sift it' keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness, blow 'he rest away." That illustrates what it means to bear one another's burden.

And yet we can never completely bear the burden of another. We can only share the burden. Only this week I visited an aged sister in Christ in a Dallas hospital, a longtime friend to Ouida and me. A widow, she has lived alone in her apartment, able to care for herself; but now having fallen and broken a hip, she may have to go to a nursing home, which she terribly dreads. She fears the future with all its uncertainty. When I heard of her added burden, I was glad that I could share it. But is there any way that I can bear it for her? I sat with her, prayed with her, and assured her that God will be with her and work things together for her good even in a nursing home. And if need be I can help financially. But I can't take her broken hip or take her place in the wheelchair. When she goes to the nursing home I can be there to assure her once more that she will be all right whatever happens, for she is within the shadow of His wings. In sharing her burden if not in actually bearing it I fulfill the law of Christ.

It is the first answer to the question of what we are to do with our burdens that troubles me the most, for I wonder if we can really cast our burdens on the Lord. It is beautiful language, especially in song, but is it true? The greatest burden any man ever bore was that of the Cross, and he who bore it looked to the God of heaven for deliverance. "If ii be possible, let this cup pass from me," Jesus implored as he faced cruel Calvary. He was given the strength to bear it, but did the Father bear it for him? The history of the church is a story of burden-bearing - hardship, persecution, imprisonment' martyrdom. They always bore the burdens, with God's help, and did not "cast them upon the Lord."

There is a lot of unreality in what we say and sing in worship to God, such as that line:

Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.

What do you suppose our heavenly Father thinks of us sitting in church with our bank accounts, CD's, annuities, Social Security, and all the rest seriously singing such a line as that? We would be mortified at the thought of doing anything like what we were singing! And there is that line that dares to say to God, "Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead." Mercy drops, indeed! There are some lines in our hymnal that we simply should not sing, even when allowing for poetic license, such as "And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known." Not St. Francis, not Mother Teresa, not even our own dear parents in all their years of serving God -only God and us have known such joy! Another song has the line "Labor is rest and pain is sweet, If thou my God art there." Nobody really believes that pain is ever sweet' not even the greatest of saints. I hesitate to sing some things lest I hear an ancient prophet say to us what he said to those of old, "God will take away the music of your songs."

We say a lot of things in church that we can't possibly mean, and I think "Cast your burden on the Lord" may be one of them. Nobody really does that or can do it. We can look to God for the strength and courage to bear life's toilsome burdens and even to deliver us from what is too much for us to bear, as He has promised, but being a child of God in our troubled world is not so simple a matter as casting our burdens on anybody else, not even God. The burdens of life are part of our discipline. God's purpose for us would be thwarted if religion were a matter of unburdening ourselves on some deity, just as you would do your child a disservice if you did his math problems for him.

There is that hymn that says what I have in mind, except that it goes one line too far:

To Thee I bring my care,
The care I cannot flee.
Thou wilt not only share,
But bear it all for me.

The last line is not true, and that is where we often go wrong as Christians in dealing with our problems. God shares our burdens but He does not always bear our burdens. I take it that that is what 1 Pet. 5:7 means, "casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you." The load that I have to bear, perhaps because of my own folly, is made lighter when I know that God cares. And I don't have to be overly anxious and fearful, even when I'm pained by the burden, for I know that God is with me and he will give me victory in one way or another. He may take the burden away, true, and we know He sometimes does that, but "If not," as those Old Testament heroes prayed, He will use it for our good, if not in this world then in the world to come. "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom. 14:8) is no mean promise.

Paul's attitude toward his grievous thorn in the flesh is to the point. The pain was not sweet, and he prayed time and again that it would be taken from him. The Lord's answer was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." This led the apostle to conclude, "Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9). He went on to say that for this reason he not only rejoiced in his infirmities but in reproaches and persecutions as well. That is how he handled his burdens.

And that is my answer, which is in essence the three answers that the Bible gives, properly balanced and interpreted. What are we to do with our burdens? Bear them with the help of God's grace, knowing that He will work for our good and for His glory. Most importantly, we are to help others bear their burdens, especially those that are within our orbit. I feel an obligation toward the bird that injures itself flying into my glass door, for it has flown within my orbit. That doesn't mean I'm obligated to every bird in the world.

Paul, like our Lord, never seemed to think in terms of unloading his burdens but in bearing them meaningfully. We probably have the best answer of all to life's inevitable struggle with adversity in these words from his pen: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). — the Editor