His Yoke

See this picture? I’m seriously considering posting it in my classroom this fall.

That’s weird on a lot of levels – one being that I am not one to do much of anything visual or decorative in my room. I'm not artistic in that way, and I simply don’t have the time or energy to mess with it. My first year of teaching, I spent a good deal of my summer making a cute little bulletin board display that I don’t remember anything about at all other than the fact that I know it wasn’t nearly as cute or meaningful as I thought it was and it took way too much of my time to create.

But I’ll admit that the idea of putting up this picture in my classroom is also weird because . . . well, just because it’s weird to display a big picture of an outdated farm implement. Like, what??

Here’s how I got to this place. I wrote a post here a couple weeks ago about rest – and that I had come to the tentative conclusion that rest is the laying down of burdens. (You can read that brilliance here.)

However, even as I wrote that, I was well aware that life is simply chock-full of burdens. Yes, we certainly make some things more burdensome than they need to be, especially if you are a bit of a workaholic perfectionist. (Ahem.) And yes, it is good for us to figure out what we’re carrying that we don’t need to be carrying at all and go all Elsa on that thing: “Let it go! Let it go!” (If you’re singing that for the rest of the day, you’re welcome.) 

But the reality is that we still have burdens to carry. We always will. There are bills to pay, illnesses to fight or fight through, possessions to maintain, bodies to feed, and humans to nurture . . . Elsa can’t sing us out of every weight we will bear if we want to live in the world responsibly.

Which brings me back to this picture of a yoke.

Somewhere in all the reading I’ve done lately (I really need to figure out a better way to keep track of where I read stuff so I can give appropriate credit), I found a great piece of advice. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as working FOR God. "I’m teaching this Sunday School class for God. I’m raising my family for God. I’m giving away my money for God."

For one thing, it gives us a rather inflated view of the worth of our work. When it comes down to it, God doesn’t need our efforts. He is quite capable of accomplishing what he needs to get done in this world without our help. Our pride may take a hit with that truth, but maybe it needs that hit. The image here isn’t of, for example, a king recruiting warriors to fight his battles for him because the opposing army is too big for him to fight alone.

A better image is that of a father who invites his son to help him clean out the garage. That sweet little boy may actually be more in the way than he is helpful . . . but his dad still wants him there working by his side. Not because he needs the help, but because he wants the companionship and wants to grow his child -- teach him his ways – develop his spirit – bestow upon him the great dignity that comes from good work.

That’s us, folks. We aren’t working FOR God as much as we are working WITH God. He’s doing the work, really; he just lets us in on the fun for our own good. We are tools through which he accomplishes the task; we are his “body” in the world. The value of our work is not so much in the results of the task (that credit goes completely to Dad) but in what he graces us with in the process . . . and that is invaluable.

“Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus told us, and that yoke is born by two sets of shoulders – ours and his. We work with him, not for him. He takes part of the burden and carries it with us. I keep wondering how different my days would be if I carried that image in my mind throughout: Jesus and me under the yoke, side by side, working together. Eugene Peterson paraphrased it this way: “Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

The unforced rhythms of grace . . . that’s beautiful. That will require some unpacking in another post someday.