Carrying Our Burdens

Recently, I watched a documentary about the world heritage narrow-gauge Kalka-Shimla Railway in northern India. Shimla is in the cool Himalayan foothills and once was the summer capital of British India as government and army staff escaped the brutal heat of southern India. An engineering feat in hostile terrain over 96 kilometres, the railway has 102 tunnels and 850 bridges, initially made of multi-arched gallery stonework, yet it was built in only three years. It began service in 1903 and still continues today.

One of the people featured in the documentary was a thin woman in her 40s who supported herself and her four sons by working as a porter at the Shimla railway station. She sits at the station every day, waiting to carry luggage for arriving passengers. The amazing thing is that she carries it strapped to her back — sometimes two or three suitcases stacked one on the other, held together by straps that are then looped around her head. She walks up and down the steep streets of the city, stooped over, looking at the ground, glancing up now and then to see where she's going.

This gave me a mental image of how we often carry our own burdens. They are piled high, too heavy, and we're walking up the steep roads of life bent over, barely able to see where we're going. We moan and groan to ourselves and our friends about all the problems in our life, stooping lower and lower as we focus only on what's wrong in our life.

Psalm 55:22 – Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved. (ESV)

1 Peter 5:7 – Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (ESV)

If we have surrendered our lives to Christ and are trusting in Him, by trying to carry our own burdens, we are missing out on what He has for us. When we release our worries and fears into the care of the Lord, He takes on the weight, and we are no longer like that porter, struggling up the steep paths of life under the weight of our burdens.

We need to be specific. We need to tell the Lord what we are so worried about, then surrender it to Him, have faith that He will sustain us as He has promised, and don't try to snatch it back on ourselves! God is not a distant, uncaring God. He actively protects and upholds us if we seek to align our lives with His will for us.

Prayer: Lord, we know that You don't want us to be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to let our requests be made known to You. Then we can let Your peace, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. (Philippians 4:6-7 ESV)

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