Yoking About Faith

One cannot live in New England without catching at least a glimpse of it's agricultural past.

Part of that past is the yoke, which is not only for livestock to pull the plow but for a wide variety of other jobs around field and town.

Yokes were used to harness animal power at a mill, or many other ingenuous ways in a time before electricity. Horses pulled wagons loads over hill and dale centuries before the locomotive arrived.

Yokes were also put around the necks of humans to help them carry a load, such as produce from the fields or sap from the trees in late winter to make maple syrup.

It was the tool of heavy labor...

I recently read a daily inspiration that asked us to take God's yoke and not complain about being tied to it.

"Not very inspirational," I muttered to myself. Yes, I am willing to do so, but I was left a bit unmotivated by the piece.

Yeshua then informed me that I misunderstood the interpretation of the word "yoke."

I had in mind the individual yoke, a basic tool to help an individual accomplish work, making mankind a "beast of burden."

When He mentions "yoke," however, it was not the individual one He had in mind, but the joint yoke.

Digging back into memories of all those New England fair presentations, I remembered the purpose of the joint yoke. It not only kept the pair of animals on the same job at the same time, it helped them to work in unison.

More importantly, the stronger of the two was able to help the weaker one with the work, taking more of the burden when necessary.

Whatever the required work was, it accomplished as a team.

When this light bulb clicked on, the second part of the meaning blossomed into my mind.

While we may be "yoked" to a fellow human being to work on a project from time to time, the one we are truly "yoked" with through life is Christ. He is not cracking the whip behind us, but working right next to us.

When we try to wander away, we may be chafed by the yoke. But when we work with Him, so much more can be done than we can do alone.

When we are weak, He is strong. And the yoke we share will never break.

His yoke is easy, and the burden is light ~ because He will carry the greater load if we let Him.