His yoke

Warning: Religious commentary, not for the “ain’t” of heart.

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 in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. – Matthew 11:28-30

I was shown this week that I’ve been seeing this scripture all wrong. I’ve always pictured it as meaning that the Savior wants us to take up a burden as part of following him, and while I’ve been willing to do so out of faith, I’ve had to wonder where the appeal is. I mean, okay, the burden is light, but it’s still a burden. Why take it up?

Then I found this passage while studying the discourses of Howard W. Hunter:

Obviously, the personal burdens of life vary from person to person, but every one of us has them. … Of course, some sorrows are brought on by the sins of a world not following the counsel of [our] Father in Heaven. Whatever the reason, none of us seems to be completely free from life’s challenges. To one and all, Christ said, in effect: As long as we all must bear some burden and shoulder some yoke, why not let it be mine? My promise to you is that my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Howard W. Hunter, Chap. 3)

It finally makes complete sense to me now. Christ is not asking us to take on a new load. He’s asking if we’ll accept him as a partner in yoke to help us with the problems and struggles we already bear. Or perhaps, more accurately, he’s asking us to swap our load for his. We’re not going from a state of rest to being burdened. We’re going from already trying to bear a heavy burden by ourselves to yoking ourselves to the Savior as a partner in labor.

It’s a subtle shift of semantics, perhaps, but it aligns more closely with my experience as I’ve tried to follow the Savior. The harder I try to follow him, to do his work, the lighter the burdens of life seem to become. They don’t go away, and I can still feel the weight of Christ’s burden, but they do seem lighter, and my abilities seem magnified. This is because Christ is upholding his part perfectly. He’s there in the yoke with me, magnifying my puny efforts. He’s not taking the load away, but he’s doing the heavier lifting by far.

People perhaps wonder how I can believe in God and Christ, and their reasons not to are not few. But my reasons for believing, in essence, can be summarized in one: it works as promised. The more I live that precepts my religion teaches the happier I am, the better able I am to cope with life, and the better I become as a person. It’s not about avoiding guilt, as so many imagine, but about achieving happiness and experiencing joy. While God has never hidden the fact that there is a stick, for me it’s always been about the carrot. The carrot is real. Trying to handle life all by myself is its own stick. I prefer the carrot, and I’ve found the way to get the carrot really works.

I’ve heard people dismissively describe God as a “sky fairy”. That’s not the God I’ve come to know. Christ is not above me looking down. He’s right next to me in the mud and the mire of life, helping me with my load, patiently waiting for me to gain the strength and determination to really make that load move, even though he’d still be doing most of the work.

But it’s never been about my becoming able to do all the work myself. It’s about me becoming willing to do the work at all.