Carrying a Heavy Load

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good afternoon and welcome to this edition of Abiding Joy. I am Pastor Patricia reap and I serve St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Coatsburg, Illinois. Have you ever felt like you run and run all day long and don't seem to get anything done? In our world today, with so many time saving devices, you would think that we would have it easier, that there would be time to sit and to rest. In Matthew, Jesus says to the people, come unto me, all you who are weary and need rest. He tells them to come and rest in him. Let him carry the burden for a while. It is so wonderful that Jesus loves us enough that he says, come and let me help you carry your concerns, your worries, all the things that weigh down our bodies and our souls. He doesn't mean that he's going to do the laundry for us or the dishes for us. They're still going to need to be done. However, he does promise that he will help carry our spiritual loads, our emotional loads, that he will walk with us throughout life. How many times have we just needed to know that someone is there with us? Jesus promised us to always be there. He is there through the power of the Holy Spirit. Not that we can see the Holy Spirit, but we can feel his presence. We can know that he is with us not in actually feeling him jump up and down inside of us, but in seeing what he helps accomplished. I've seen people who were just very nervous or very upset. And just the act of saying the Lord's prayer, reciting the prayer they learned from youth helps to calm them. Or reciting a favorite passage such as John 316. Jesus gives us these types of things. I've also seen it in the act of holy communion. When I give people Holy Communion and they change, you can see them begin to calm down because they know that Christ is with them, that Christ is in them. There are so many ways that Jesus offers us rest. He offers us to lay our burdens at his feet, promising that he will help us to carry them. Because Jesus walks with us through life yesterday, today, and forever. This has been abiding joy. I thank you for joining us and hope that you will come back and join us again. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Bye.