heavy laden

 She walks down the street on a Monday morning,

calling loud for all to hear

'fruit for sale! fresh fruit!'

Mangoes, Rambutan,

a basket laden heavy with a means of living.

She stops at a gate to make a sale.

The fruit in her basket is past its prime,

and a little bruised around the edges,

but then so am I.

It will still be sweet,

and I hope that the years and the bruising

are producing sweeter fruit in my life, too.

It's not until she turns to go that I see her companion,

her young daughter

burdened too with this task of earning a living;

not in a school with a desk

learning to read and write,

but in training for a life of work and of heavy  load.

And I give thanks again

because that could be me,

walking down the dusty street

with the heavy burden of daily subsistence.

That could be our daughters beside me,

laden with such a load; the weight of the world,

the responsibility of earning their keep

in a school of heavy burdens.

Could it be that

but for the grace of God,

this might be you,

calling loud for all to hear,

hoping for a sale,

for pesos to buy this day your daily rice?

******

What burdens are you carrying today?

Are your shoulders bowed with the load?

Financial worries, health issues, tense relationships,challenges with children, 

spiritually dry, aging, loss of work, discouragement or sin...

It's heavy, and it hurts.

May the bruising be producing sweeter fruit for Him in you and me

as we give Him thanks for not leaving us to bear it alone.

His yoke is easy; His burden light.

But only because He is bearing the weight of the load. 

"Cast it all on Me," He says...

"I care for you."

 1 Peter 5:7

"Are you in a hurry, flurried, distressed? 
Look up! See the Man in the Glory!  
Let the face of Jesus shine upon you - the wonderful face of the Lord Jesus Christ.  
Is He worried or distressed?
There is no care on His brow, no least shade of anxiety.
Yet the affairs are as much His as yours."

- Hudson Taylor

*edited from the archives