
“And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing!” (It Came Upon a Midnight Clear)
Today is a day that invites us consider what is weighing us down, what is crushing our passion and hindering us from being the people we are called to be?
God’s timing is perfect. One day last week Mary Mary’s song, “Shackles” popped into my head and I wanted to dance. After a draught of not feeling like dancing, after a period of overthinking and being lost in my own mind/body, I was drawn to a force greater than me… a connection to the cosmos. This same type of revival is happening at Asbury University and around the world in the hearts of many this week.
That connection to other people and God is waiting there for us. It’s there when we need it, when we pursue it, when we wait for it, when we are not expecting it. It can be as overt as a campus overflowing with people praising God or a silent and subtle as a friend sitting quietly with us so we will know we are not alone. In a world of chaos and fear, God’s rays of sunshine are penetrating the dark. There is no recipe of worship we have to pursue in order to accept them. All we need to do is to be willing to let the rays in. The rays will transform all that we do; all that we are becoming turns into a way to worship God.
Our burdens do not have to be as heavy as shackles. We carry the weight of so much these days… physical pain, history, relationship scars, grief, confusion. Yet, we do not have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. God offers to walk beside us and carry our load. We are no longer prisoners; we are driven people surrounded and protected by the weight of LOVE, a force so great that it transforms the way we carry ourselves and interact with others. LOVE transforms.




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