I usually don’t start with a scripture in the first line of a post, but I will today: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)
As followers of Christ, it is important that we look out for one another. It is important that we invest the time it takes to address the needs of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Speaking for myself, I think I miss the mark sometimes. It’s not that I don’t take concern when I know someone is carrying a load that seems unbearable. It’s that I don’t believe I go far enough.
It is a good thing to encourage someone who is straining and strugglilng to make it through. It is great to have a cheerleader telling you not to give up, that you can make it. It’s just that sometimes more is required.
It is also a good thing to pray for those in need of help. God is the greatest help to anyone, and petitioning Him for the assistance of someone else is both correct and necessary.
But all to often we stop there. Then we go on with our lives, thinking we have done what it takes. And, yes, there are times when this is all we can do for someone.
Then there are times we need to go the extra mile. Once we have encouraged and prayed, then what? What do we do to help this person to carry the load?
Whatever it takes.
It may take sacrifice, it may take work and effort, it may take patience, it may take whatever we have to give. If we truly love our brothers and sisters, and if we truly love God, we must be willing to do whatever it takes to help them to make it through difficulties, struggles, trials, and troubles. We can’t do this from afar, we have to get in there with them. It requires more than sympathy, to suffer the experience with them and share it, but empathy, truly feeling their pain as though it were your own and going through it right alongside them.
I think personally this is where I sometimes fail. Although I can sympathize with their situation, I really don’t feel, hurt, and suffer with them.
My prayer is that God will teach me, and all of us, to truly be willing and able to do whatever it takes, to not only to feel sorry for the burdens of others, but to feel the pain of others with them, to share that burden in such a way that their struggle is lessened, and not let up until the load is lifted by God’s grace from their shoulders.
Do all that you can would be the best way to sum it up. As one business man put it many years ago, “All you can do is all you can do; but all you can do is enough.”
Have a blessed day.
Tags: Bible, Christ, difficulties, empathy, encouragement, Galatians.burden, God, Jesus, life, load, love, prayer, relationships, sharing, struggle, trial, trouble
[...] Unquantified A blog of Christian thoughts and encouragement by Robert Berdine « Bearing The Burden [...]