“Blessed be the Lord! Day after day He bears our burdens.” Psalm 68:19 CSB
I love what the title of this chapter is in my Bible: “God’s Majestic Power.” God’s majestic power to carry our burdens, whatever they may be. We all have them, some obvious, some not so obvious. No one is without though; everyone is carrying a burden. God wants you to give them to Him. He wants to carry the load for you. I’ve used it before, I’m sure I will use it again because I believe in its truth: “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 NLT
Sometimes, what we think of as a burden is actually a blessing.
I recently watched “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the story of Queen and its lead singer Freddie Mercury. Freddie was born with four extra back teeth which pushed his front teeth forward. It was a constant source of embarrassment for him throughout his life. It is one of the things he is most remembered for today. His burden was noticed immediately upon meeting him.
There was a moment in the movie when he is first getting together with the other members of the band. He’s approached them about being their lead singer; the response he immediately receives is, “Not with those teeth, mate.” Having dealt with this his entire life, he already has a response: “I was born with four additional incisors. More space in my mouth means more range.” Then he belts out a few lines and voila, the group is born. He was worth $60 million when he died in 1991, he never had them fixed. Even though he struggled with embarrassment from his teeth, he truly believed it gave him more range. Whether it did or not, I don’t know. What I do know that his daily burden was also a blessing.
God will carry our burdens for us daily, but we have to give them to Him. If we keep them all to ourselves, life will get very heavy. When I am burdened and don’t know where to turn, I turn to Him. I get on my knees and I pour it out to Him. I have done this so many times in my life, I am very familiar with the results. It doesn’t necessarily change the situation, although often times it does. It always changes me. I always feel lighter when I get back up, knowing I’ve given it to the One who can do something about it. I know He will, because He always does. And oftentimes, those things I thought were burdens, they were blessings in disguise.
