Burden-bearers

When a large department store closed in our town, and everything went up for sale, my husband bought some used furniture dollies from its warehouse. He thought they’d help with a ministry he’s a part of: picking up and then distributing donated furniture to people in crisis and great need. As the freshly-painted dollies sat on our lawn to dry, I thought of the Bible’s references to “burden bearers,” such as Galatians 6:2: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” This verse is often misapplied to compassion for hurting people in general. It’s actually about restoring, with gentleness and wisdom, someone who gets caught sinning, The verse infers sin so serious that those who help this person are to “watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”

Yet coming alongside a sinning fellow believer, knocked down by negative choices,  involves the same spiritual enabling as reaching out to those buffeted by living in a fallen world. Just before that section, in Galatians 5:22-23, Paul listed the “fruits of the spirit” that are evidence of a growing life in Christ. In serving one another, we all need love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

 Perhaps a better spiritual “furniture dolly” analogy comes from Jesus’ healing of paralytics. In ancient Palestine, those unable to work because of disability would beg, depending on others’ muscle power to move them about. In Matthew 9 the Lord healed a paralytic whose friends simply him brought to Jesus.  In Mark 2, Jesus healed a paralytic whose friends were a bit more aggressive: they crawled to the top of the crowded house where Jesus was preaching, removed part of the roof, and lowered him down. The pronouns in both accounts tell us much: “When Jesus saw their faith” (Matthew 9:2 and Mark 2:3, emphasis added). To work with this with a bit of sanctified imagination, it could have begun like this:

Friend to paralyzed man: “Hey, Jesus, the great miracle worker and teacher is in town. You’ve got to go see Him. I think He could heal even you.”

Paralytic: “That would be my wildest dream come true. But how could I ever get there?”

Friend: “I’ve got some buddies coming.  The four of us will carry your mat.  We just have to do this.”

In contrast is the healing told in John 5. This man, an invalid for 38 years, had begged at the pool of Bethesda, where people believed healings could take place. Then Jesus came along and asked, “Do you want to get well?” You’d think the guy would blurt out “yes!” Instead, he pined this little song about how somebody else kept beating him into the pool for a “stirred-up-waters-cure.”

Jesus’ reply is a picture of His great love for us, even when we have zero to little faith. He simply said, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once, the man was healed. I’m struck by its fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophetic sketch of a suffering Messiah: “Sure he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). 

We cannot, in our own power, carry the weight of the world’s sins and sorrows.  That’s God’s job.  But when He calls us to be “burden-bearers”—whether that means wise counsel, a listening ear, prayerful support, or practical help —He is right behind us as we face the “load” of need. In moving that hurting person closer to Him, faith turns the wheels of that spiritual “dolly.”