Snow and Heavy Laden

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

The resiliency God puts into His creation is nothing short of amazing.

I’ve wondered how something as seemingly delicate as a pine needle can be weighed down with snow, frozen, bent and pushed about by the wind, and yet appear uninjured and still function when the snow melts and warm weather returns. And the large branches supporting all of this are being pulled and twisted in sub-freezing temperatures as well. Most of us have seen instances when a branch or tree will snap off, but most of the time life continues with little or no negative effect from heavy loads such as these. And that’s just one instance of a myriad of different stresses and strains which happen over the lifetime of a tree, at least in the mountains where I live.

Some of you may have seen the same thing with animals. There was once a deer in our yard whose hind leg was mangled and hanging by a what looked like a thin strip of skin. I didn’t see how the animal got injured, but the result was nasty. The deer’s staggering gait was painful to watch. The deer seemed to be in shock as it stood staring blankly ahead.

It may sound strange to you, but sometime during all of this my wife and I began to pray God would heal that deer’s leg. This has been so many years ago I no longer remember the exact sequence of events of this experience.

Seeing that crippled deer in so much pain was too much for me to take. I called the local game warden to put the deer down so it wouldn’t continue to suffer. The warden showed up in just a few minutes, and we went around to my backyard to do the deed. The deer was nowhere to be seen. Knowing it couldn’t have gone far, we walked into the woods behind the house. We looked and looked, but we still couldn’t find it anywhere. How could this be? After searching some more without finding the injured deer, the game warden departed.

A few days later we saw the deer again. The wound wasn’t as fresh, and a bit more of the skin was beginning to cover the injury. Some days later we saw what appeared to be the same deer yet again. Although it still hobbled around on three legs, some of the wound was now covered over with fur, and a knot began to appear where there once was a complete break of the bones. Weeks later I came around the corner of our home and unintentionally spooked the deer when it was in our yard. It scampered a few yards up the hill, and actually put a little weight on the injured leg in the process.

Although I can’t be one hundred percent sure it was the same animal, the rest of that summer we’d sometimes see a deer with a swollen joint on that same leg, limping/walking about our yard. By autumn the deer walked with barely a limp, and the swollen area on the joint appeared much smaller. Remembering what that leg looked like in the spring, this type of recovery seemed nearly impossible, at least by human standards.

In the above Scripture, Jesus promises to give us rest when we are burdened and heavy laden. He can give us that rest even when things look really, really bad. I hope you will believe on Him to do that very thing for you.

Not sure how to have that type of close relationship with our Creator? See Got God

Hope you have a great day.