Come to Me-All You Who Are Weary and Heavy Laden, and I will give you Rest.
Everyone with small exception goes through the stuff and junk of life. Some people are more adept at not blowing a gasket or losing a widget over the trivial- and some say 'it's all small stuff" but it's stuff nevertheless. Some of it is heavier than usual. Some of it is nearly unbearable or impossible.
None of it should however be intentionally aggravated in the name of the Lord.
That is why bullying is disgusting and intolerable- regardless of what you may think of someone else's state of sin. That is why the arrogance of the self-satisfied, self-laudatory pharisees whom we all heard about yesterday proudly touting that they were not like all the other adulterers, greed-monsters and sinful characters is so obnoxious to God. He prefers the guy so overwhelmed with his awareness of his need for him that he can't even look up into the heavens. The guy who knew he made a living off skimming other people--the tax collector- who just beat his chest despondently bowed over with convicted guilt asking humbly for mercy "on me a sinner" is the one who is justified, not the self-satisfied, self-laudatory pharisee with all the spiritual credentials and the highest place in society.
It is also why on the trek to the cross we should not have to make life more ridiculously burdensome than it already is- we should not impose artificial burdens and yokes not His, to make life more miserable -because that is not following him to the cross. That is following him to your own institutionally lethargic guillotine. That is why man made rules don't advance the cause of holiness-they frustrate it and defeat it. Jesus is not an institution. Jesus is LOVE. Say it with me. Jesus is LOVE.
I CAME THAT YOU WOULD HAVE LIFE AND HAVE IT ABUNDANTLY. CHOOSE THEREFORE LIFE.
It's LIFE that is waiting. It's LOVE that's waiting.
(Painting above is frescoed into the ceiling of turn of the 20th C. church Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Homestead, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.)
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