Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. -Matthew 11:28-30
The Lord taught me something new about this beautiful passage recently, something I thought worth sharing.
Think about a yoke. What does it do? What is it for? A yoke is a device used to connect two draft animals, such as oxen. It is a frame that goes around their necks so that a load can be pulled on their shoulders. It is a device, in short, to get animals to do work, to allow greater loads to be pulled by them.
Seen this way, it seems odd to say that taking His yoke upon us will help us find rest. Taking His yoke upon us is submitting to work and to trial. Indeed, taking His yoke upon us is submitting to commandments and covenants, committing to service and work. It's anything but laziness.
Yet that's not understanding the whole purpose of a yoke. A yoke gets animals to do work, but does so by combining the efforts of two of them. So when we take Christ's yoke upon us, we are committing to work, but we're also combining our efforts with the being with which we are yoked: Christ Himself. So we are adding to our load in one sense, adding callings and tithing and the commandment to forgive to all of our other challenges, but at the same time, Christ is suddenly helping us with our load.
To this He adds, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." And it is. Compared to the baggage we bring to this wagon team, His burden is very light indeed. And He is, in the language of this analogy, the strongest ox we could possibly be paired with. Yes, He brings an additional load, but then He does almost all the work on both His and ours, all He asks is our best effort.
The Gospel is work, but the Lord is doing the heavy lifting. Don't worry about whether you have the strength to commit to do His will, because you'll find that He provides it.
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