| Things to Live For |
Chapter 20 |
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Life has this peculiarity, that its experiences are its own, without any possibility of transference to any other, or even of sharing in any actual way by another. This is one of the mysteries of being. Each must live his life alone. Help can come to us only at a few points, and there are only in matters that are external. Our friends may send fuel for our fire, or bread for our hunger, or give us money to pay our debts; but the burdens of life’s deep personal experiences, of whatever sort they may be, no one can carry for us, or even really share with us.
It will be noticed, too, that God himself does not promise to bear our burden for us. So much is it an essential and inseparable part of our life that even the divine love cannot relieve us of its weight. Or if we say it must be possible, God being omnipotent, for him to take our load off our shoulders if he would, we may say at least that this is not the way of divine love.
The teaching from all this is that we cannot hope to have our life burden lifted off. Help cannot come to us in the way of relief. The prayer to be freed from the load cannot be answered. The assurance is, not that the Lord will take our burden when we cast it upon him, lifting it away from our shoulder; it is, instead, a promise that while we bear our burden, whatever it may be, the Lord will sustain us. He will give us strength to continue faithful, to go on with our doing of God’s will, unimpeded, unhindered, by the pressure of the load we must carry.
Here it is that the light breaks upon this divine word from the margin. Glancing at the reference we see that the word “gift” is set down as an alternative reading. “Cast thy gift upon the Lord.” Thus we get the teaching that our burden is a gift of God to us. At once the thing, which a moment ago seemed so oppressive in its weight, so unlovely in its form, is hallowed and transformed. We had thought it an evil, whose effect upon us could be only hurtful, hindering our growth, marring our happiness. But now we see that it is another of God’s blessings, not evil, but good, designed not to hurt us, nor to impede our progress, but to help us onward. The whole aspect of our burden is changed as we see it in the new light that shines from the margin.
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