I’d just read the verse “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” [Matthew 11:30] and the commentary around it was how Jesus, being the other oxen, takes the biggest load. I didn’t agree so husband and I were chatting about it in the car as we drove south on Sunday.
Most of the preaching I’d heard was around the idea that Jesus is the other oxen in a dual yoke, and talk of how a younger oxen used to be yoked with an older oxen to learn the trade and how Jesus was the older oxen. But my husband said he’d heard that the Pharisees teaching was called a yoke and that what Jesus was saying was that his teaching was easy compared to the Pharisees teachings. So the teachings were the yoke over the oxen.
Who puts the yoke on an ox? The ploughman. So this got us to thinking what is Jesus is the ploughman, which then comes back to The Greatest Sin post about letting go of control and trusting God. The ploughman knows where the ox needs to go prepare the land and then later to harvest the land. The oxen has no idea. Though I do suspect, like my dogs, they do know what they are doing after a while but still need to be guided.
So with this thought in mind we need to start trusting that Jesus/God is with us guiding us. Too often we go somewhere or do something and “invite God into the situation” with a prayer. But if we are letting God guide us then they are there with us and they have got it covered. It is them leading us to plough the furrow not us deciding which furrow to plough – if we are willing to let them. It makes it more than just acknowledging God in a situation but it means knowing God is fully in that situation and has led us that way so we are there.
Too often we do the acknowledging once we’re there but I think this is another one of those verses that should be read differently – as in “acknowledge that God is able to be trusted and is in control and that way your paths will be straight”, or something like that. Ok so it doesn’t scan quite as nicely but, for me, it makes more sense. Or maybe even “Wow God is in all of this because I let my heart trust them and let them take over“?
So it isn’t so much me taking God into a situation but Jesus guiding and leading me into the situations. Again it takes the onus off me to remember and lets Jesus be the guiding steerer to my life.
So much easier!
Aspirational Adventures 