A yoke is a heavy restricting harness that is used to force large animals of burden to work together to pull heavy loads. Usually, a yoke is made of a beam of wood that rests on the oxen’s shoulder and more wood that wraps around the neck and chest to force two or more oxen to work together. The work is usually plowing a field, hauling a wagon, or pulling some logs. It is not a very nice or happy image to use when speaking about life.
For many people in today’s world, it is a good image for their life. For many, life is a heavy burden that is nothing more than sadness, difficulties, depression, even despair. Then if any of those folks try to live a religious or spiritual life, they often see religion as just some additional rules about being good and helping others added on to an already unsupportable life. Religion becomes just a set of more rules that tie us down. Just more heavy work.
Jesus uses this image to show us just the opposite: he has come to be part of our lives and to share our troubles. This makes life easier. We have Jesus at our side walking with us through life. Jesus opened up a way for us to return to God’s live in God’s love. Plus, as Christians we not only have Jesus with us, but we also have our Christian family and Christian community. All of us work together to help and support each other through life.
Jesus calls us today to learn. Everything we do in school is to bring us to learn this: as Christian we are connected (yoked) to Jesus, and he is yoked to us. That is the center point of our faith that produces joy in us. Everything that we learn in school is to help us share that joy with others.
Learn from me…
This yoke is easy to bear
and this burden is light.
Image: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/matthew-112930–53409945576057430/