THE BURDEN BEARER.
BY F. B. A.
Perhaps no one is
called upon to bear so many burdens as the truly sympathetic person. When such
a loving heart is brought into contact with one heavily burdened an electric
current, as it were, is established between the two, and the compassionate
heart is pressed with the burden of the troubled soul, which is correspondingly
eased of its load. We know such sympathetic loving ones whose hearts and eyes
at once responded to sorrow’s beseeching look, whose healing sympathy is ever
ready to flow where there is a wound to heal. But do we ever think that this
expenditure of sympathy has cost them anything! DO we know the preparation the
heart underwent before it could dispense sympathy? Do we know what
chastening’s, what boring through life’s encrustations were necessary ere these
sweet healing streams gushed forth?
The apostle
enjoins that we “bear one another’s burdens.” Bearing any burden, be it ever so
light, is always at the expense of strength, even if the exercise increases our
strength. So that when we make demands upon the sympathy of others, we demand
some of their power, their strength. How inexhaustible, then, must be the
compassion of Jesus, and how infinite His strength, since every demand upon Him
meets with a ready response? Do we ever think of the full cost of this
spontaneous outflow of sympathy from the heart of the Man of Sorrows?
Why the Man of Sorrows? He bore upon His shoulders the weight of the
world’s woes. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” To
carry them He had to stoop down very low, to get away beneath them, to lay “His
back to the burden,” and then by the exercise of divine power, to raise Himself
up and bear them. Bearing such a load He was the Man of Sorrows. All
this was necessary before sympathy’s overflowing cup could “mingle one drop of
healing” with our afflictions. “The Captain of our salvation (as such) was made
perfect through suffering.”
Jesus Christ did
not merely bear the sorrows of the world in a mass, but He bears the individual
sorrows of each individual sufferer. He has an intense personal sympathy with
each. “Now, Jesus love Martha and her sister and Lazarus,”
we read. “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me,” Paul
wrote, as if no other needy one than himself existed. This love must be a
personal matter between us and Christ before His sympathy can raise our burden
off us. Personal contact with a personal Saviour is necessary. How very far off
Christ seems when viewed as the Saviour of mankind; how very near, as my
Saviour. So, also, it is written of Him, “Himself took our infirmities and bare
our sickness as a whole and minister healing to the world.
The touch of
faith, the individual touch, brings healing. Personal contact with the healing
power brings health. “As many as touched Him were made whole” and are still
made whole. Each one is relieved by having his own burden laid upon Jesus, of
which additional weight He is deeply conscious, through the power expended in
bearing that burden. The women with the bloody issue thought that she could
come secretly through the crowd, place her burden upon Jesus, be relieved and
quietly retire, and no one be conscious of it. But Jesus felt the added weight
and said, “I perceive that power has gone out from me”-the strength necessary
to bear that weight. So when we cast our burden upon the Lord, it means
that He bears it; our load presses upon Him. It costs Christ
something to bear our burdens; the heavier they are the more heavily they press
upon Him. He bears the weight of ours ins. Oh! how careful we should be to know
and do His will, that we impose as light a burden as possible upon our dear
Lord. How very near and dear to us the Master becomes when, by faith, we have
touched Him and had our burdened souls eased; have had our tears dried by the sunshine
of His love and sympathy. Our sorrows draw us nearer to Him, and these are
often the only channel through which He can convey to us the great blessing of
knowing and trusting Him. It is when the head is bowed with grief, the heart
wrung with sorrow, that the grasp of a friendly hand of the loving word of sympathy
are so precious. It is our suffering which reveals to us the boundless sympathy
of Him whose heart broke beneath the self-imposed load of a world’s sorrows. It
is when we glance upward, under our heavy trial, and through our tears behold
the ender, pitying, tear-filled eyes of our Saviour beaming down upon us with
an expression of unfathomable love that our tired, burdened should just throws
itself upon the bosom of God and, childlike, there burdens itself and receives the
great comfort of Him Who says, “As one whom his mother comforteth so will I
comfort thee” Is not the chastening worth bearing that brings such comfort? He,
Who wounds, through His own wounds makes whole. He, Who lays the burden upon
us, Himself bears it for us He lays it upon us that we may roll it over upon
Him, and know Him to be our burden-bearer. May we all know what it means
to say, “Jesus Christ is my full Saviour.”
***
ON THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
It chanceth once
to every soul
Within a narrow
hour of doubt and dole,
Upon Life’s
Bridge of Sighs to stand,
“A place and a
prison on each hand.”
Oh, place of the
rose-heart’s hue,
How like a flower
the warm light falls from
you!
Oh, prison, with
the hollow eyes!
Beneath your
stony stare now flowers arise.
Oh, place the
rose-sweet sin,
How safe the
heart that does not enter in!
Oh, blessed
prison walls, how true
The freedom of the
soul that chooseth you!
-Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps.
