Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30

Jesus invited everyone who is tired from carrying heavy burdens of life to come to him for rest.  That is among the most comforting scriptures in the New Testament.  What he says next, however, has confused me for most of my Christian life.  “Take my yoke upon you”.  I thought he was going to lighten my load, not add to it.  Even a light load on top of what I’m already carrying sometimes seems like too much. I must be missing something.

It turns out, I was missing the point entirely.  The yoke is not used to cruelly chain an ox to a burden.  Instead it is a means to join the strength of two oxen together when a load is too heavy for one to bear alone.  Instead of adding to my burden, Jesus is providing the means to share the load between us.  When a farmer selects the oxen to pair together as a team, he must use great care to match them by size and strength.  If one is significantly stronger than the other, the stronger one will end up with most of the load, leading to injury.  When we bind ourselves to Jesus, he takes on most of the load, even though it cost him his life on the cross.

The other use of the yoke was to allow an experienced ox to train a young ox as they worked together against a load.  Every subtle move of the experienced ox is felt by the young one as they work together.  Without a word spoken between them, the young ox learns from the experienced one.  As we join our lives to Jesus, we are gently guided in the way of life by our older brother.

The start of 2020 is a perfect time to reflect on how well you are walking with Jesus.  Straining against the yoke robs you of the strength to carry the loads of life and keeps you from learning from Jesus.  But comfortably sharing the load with Jesus leads to peace and progress in life.