Not my burden…..

Reflections from your Pastor……
Watching one of those “finding my ancestors shows”, I was reminded how resilient we can be as humans. There are so many stories of how this person or these people, in spite of all odds, made it across the ocean and landed in the United States. Even after landing here, they had to deal with numerous hurdles in order to just survive. But so many of them did survive, and even thrive and this is why we are the United States that we are today; because of all those who came here. But I wonder if we sometimes take the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” thing a little too far. What about the times when we run face first into something that is obviously bigger than we are and stronger than we can be? If we have only learned to rely on ourselves, what to do then? It’s easy to say trust in God, but that is not in our DNA. Perhaps we can learn a different way. One that recognizes that we are all human and we are inter-connected, inter-dependent, one with each other. When one of us falls, we all fall. When one of us succeeds, then we as the human race, succeed. When we learn to count on one another we become stronger, not weaker as a society. When we act in conjunction with what is best for my neighbor, we become better communities, better people. In turn, when we figure out that we are not in this alone, we begin to allow ourselves to trust God, to turn to God because we cannot do this on our own. There is a tune playing on Christian radio these days called “Dear Younger Me”. In it the singer muses on what he would tell his younger self if he were able to. He goes through some of the common pieces of advice until he gets to this line, “Dear younger me,
It’s not your fault, You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross.” This is my favorite lyric! It reminds me that whenever I encounter obstacles in my life, I am called to lay them down before God. Even the ones that happened years ago and are still carried as burdens. Lay them down before God, you weren’t meant to carry them anyway. We don’t need to do this life on our own. We are inter-connected with all other humans and we are connected with God through Jesus Christ. So let us learn, again, to lean on one another and to turn to our trust in God when this world sends obstacles. God has not failed us yet!