The weight of the world on His shoulders…
Ever get that horrible heavy feeling when you are weighed down by the condition of the world, the circumstances around you, the pain and suffering of others, the feeling that you are not enough to do anything at all about it?
I had that heavy feeling yesterday. It was awful.
Of course, it was my own doing. No one asked me to carry that kind of burden around. I’m supposed to love and care for others, but their burdens? I’m supposed to help them give those to Jesus, not hang them around my neck as if I could do anything with them. My job is to love, and help others find and live in freedom from the heaviness of life.
And why can we experience that kind of freedom? Because there is Someone who took on EVERYTHING for us. Literally, the weight of the world. We try to imagine Him wearing the sin of all of us for all time as He hung on that cross. As gruesome as that thought is, it gets worse than that. Picture Him also feeling every brokenness caused by sin that we experience. Depression. Anxiety. Fear. Hopelessness. Anger. Guilt. Pain. Addiction. Lostness. Anything that we have faced that He didn’t experience while He was living on earth, He experienced as He was dying on that tree.
The entire weight of the world on His shoulders.
The thought brings me to tears.
He did that so that we didn’t have to. He died so we could live. Live fully and freely. Does that mean our problems suddenly disappear? I wish, but no. We still live in a broken, imperfect world. But the weight of that world can be shifted. It HAS been shifted and we just need to recognize that shift. He took it on at the cross. He is still the lifter of our burdens. They may still be in our line of vision, but we can be relieved of their heaviness.
Galatians 6:2 tells us to carry one another’s burdens. But I don’t think it means to just carry them around. I think it means to help others carry them to Jesus. Psalm 55:22 says, “Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you.” He’s the one that has proven that He can hold its weight. And He’s the ONLY one who can sustain carrying that weight.
I’m hoping to have a lighter day today after my “aha” moment. After taking my burdens and the burdens of others and handing them off to Jesus.
Isaiah 53:4-5 – Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Matthew 11:28 – Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
