Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken (Psalm 55:22, CSB). The more life we live, the more we understand what it is to feel burdened. We face multiple deadlines that somehow all need to be met at the same time. We have to schedule yet another appointment and pay yet another bill. We find ourselves picking up the slack for others. We encounter forks in the road and stress about which decision is the right one. We worry about the well-being of our loved ones. In a sense, I think it’s right to have things weighing on us. The burden not only indicates that we have been given responsibility, but that the responsibility matters to us. In another sense, there are times when the burdens of life simply feel like too much . Our shoulders throb and our knees buckle under the sheer weight of life. It feels like one more traffic-laden commute, one more urgent problem, or one more request will cause us to snap, to collapse, to fall....
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted . . . To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes . . .” (Isaiah 61:1, 3, NKJV). I don’t know about you, but in the time and place where I live, I don’t encounter ashes very often. Not only do HVAC systems make wood-burning fireplaces irrelevant, but in the Valley of the Sun, we don’t depend on our heaters as much as people in other parts of the world. However, I have sat around my fair share of campfires, and I have seen the powdery gray residue left over after the fire dies out. The ash is all that remains of what has been burned. It was once wood, but now it’s dust. Ashes are a symbol of grief. They are a tangible sign of loss. After a campfire, you can’t scoop up the ashes and reform them into wood. When a building burns down, it’s impossible to gather the ashes and turn them back into the structure th...