Jesus said:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
When life seems too hard, when the call to follow Jesus seems too difficult, when he seems to ask too much of us, we can find solace in these words. Jesus was moved to speak in the first place because he saw that we were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Like a shepherd he spoke to us telling us that, as sheep, we would need to put him first if we wanted to live in safety and security. It is true that his call might mean we would need to separate from people who did not desire to live under this shepherd, who would not put him first in their own lives. Choosing anyone else other than him would be a danger to us as his sheep. We would be at risk of wolves and of falling in pits. We would be as blind being led by the blind.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
We are called by Jesus to take up our cross any follow him. In considering this, we remember that our shepherd did not come to us for his own profit our gain. Neither then is anyone in his flock is permitted to live only for oneself. Our shepherd is our exemplar, as he himself is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We too are called to lay down our lives in service of one another. This talk of the cross seems heavy, overwhelming, and potentially impossible. And it would be if we had to do it alone. But we do not have to do it alone. Jesus allows us to share his own yoke, and to do by his grace what we could never do alone. The path ahead, considered apart from this grace will never seem appealing, will always seem beyond us. But it turns out that all other yokes are in fact heavier than his, no matter what they promise. Only when we take him at his word and share his yoke, by which we mean letting him live out his life through us, loving and sacrificing for others, do we discover the one path in which peace is found.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
There is no way to follow that doesn't include a yoke, no matter what the world promises. Let us trust the one who knows us, who cares about us more than we care about ourselves, who made us and formed us, to guide us in the way we are meant to walk. He proves himself once more in the fact that he does not merely call us to follow him, but he himself shoulders our burdens together with us.
casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (see First Peter 5:7).
The Lord does not want us to stay under the yoke of the Egyptians. He is calling us out from that slavery into the freedom that, paradoxically, only comes once we surrender to him. In order to receive this truth we must receive the revelation of who he is, self-sufficient, standing in no need of anything, acting from his abundance for the sake of his creatures. We can then learn, little by little, to trust him with our freedom until we are completely his.
Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the children of Israel:
I AM sent me to you.”
God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the children of Israel:
The LORD, the God of your fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you.
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