Message from Augie

Love can make our burdens lighter.   When we share the burdens of Life with Christ in our fellow disciples, burdens are easier to bear.

Over the years I have tried to write a song thinking about “my yoke is easy and my burden is light,”  to a rap tune and go on America’s Got Talent.   In this blurred mental state, scenes flash through my head.

The burden is light?  Ponderous clouds from the musical Les Miserables say not.  Prisoners sweat in the sun.  Their backs are hopelessly bent.   How can the yoke be easy?   Oppression and misery and pain.   There is so much bondage in the world.

                In the darkness behind my eyelids, my mind zooms to yesterday.  I see a friend.  I recall the hospital bed.   Her husband died while saying the rosary.

I see a young mother and her six year old son.   Rocking and feeding, playing and interacting - all day and all night, she is yoked to that boy.  Babies are hard work.

So why are some yokes easier to bear?  There was a deep love between my friend and her dying husband.   There was warmth in the eyes of the mother when she looked into the eyes of her son.   We will do difficult things for love.   Love makes the burden light.

Sin makes the burden heavy.   We cannot act as though everything is not so bad after all.  Oppression is wrong.   Misery harms.  Prisoners matter.  We carry the burdens of others - not nameless faces in a movie, but the needy folks who surround us.   Yet, the joy of discipleship is that we do not carry that weight alone.

Now the song is still not written.  I realize the love of this world is strong.  The burden of the world is heavy.  This is a paradox bigger that I can shoulder.   I get out of bed, grateful that this world has a Savior, and more grateful that it is not me.

                SO THE QUESTION:  THE JOY OF LOVE MAKES LIFE LIGHTER.   WHO HAS HELPED YOU TO CARRY YOUR CROSS?