Matthew 11:28-30

Have an independent streak when it comes to doing things? “I can manage this workload myself.” “I won’t wait for help; I can move this heavy furniture across the room.” What does that get you? Pride in taking credit for the work? Satisfaction you redecorated by yourself? Couple that with resentful coworkers or an aching back, and what have you really gained?

Better yet - work with someone; a more effective job might be accomplished and the boss even more pleased. Share the burden; it makes for much easier work, and sometimes you can let your husband carry the bulk of the load, manhandling the mattress going backwards down the stairs while you simply guide it and get to walk forward. 

Isn’t that what Jesus is counseling? Let me help. “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (11:28). We live lives burdened with busyness, burdened with worry during Covid, burdened with trying to do everything in our own strength. We are yoked to our burdens. It has ever been thus, as the carol writer penned: “Long lay the world, in sin and error pining” [italics added].

We want relief and rest, don’t we? At the news of a coming Savior, at the first Advent and in every new believer's heart, “the weary world rejoices,” for “in all our trials [He is] born to be our Friend.”  

True, we still have to labor, but our work was never supposed to be the burden we have made it. Listen to Jesus as He urged his contemporaries, as He urges us: “Take My yoke upon you...for My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (11:29,30). “He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger.”

A yoke always attaches to a burden. Yoked with Christ, we have Another pulling with us, making the labor lighter and more productive. Outside His yoke, we pull alone. We grow weary from the needless strain. 

In the yoke, we learn from Christ: “take My yoke upon you and learn from me” (11:29, emphasis added). Yoke with Jesus, and He’ll do the heavy lifting if we’ll just let Him. Let Him teach us how to pull the load effectively, with Him, how to be more like Him, and - in the process - how to find that rest we keep putting off because we’re too busy tackling our burdens. That’s worth “fall[ing] on our knees... His power and glory evermore [to] proclaim.”

”O Holy Night,” 1847, Adolphe Adam. Translated from the original French by J. S. Dwight, 1855.