Come to me all you that are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my is
burden light. - Matthew 11:28-30
I take a lot on myself. At present, I
am working two part-time jobs, helping to found a grassroots
community organizing group, and nurturing a
new Quaker Meeting on Capitol Hill. Taking into account my
commitments to Ohio
Yearly Meeting, my marriage, and all the practical duties that
come with being a householder, it is amazing that I sleep.
Not only do I sleep, I dream. Despite
all of my existing responsibilities and projects, I continue to
envision what the next steps might be. What is the next action? What
will be the next project? How might my community be further energized
and equipped? Even as I busy myself with the present work, my mind
races ahead to next steps. I keep my eyes on the big picture.
This is good. I have learned by now
that part of my role in community is to help cast vision. We
sometimes get so caught up in the details of what we are already
doing that we miss out on the new possibilities that God is opening
up. We can get so fixated on technique that we lose the sense of
overarching purpose that originally inspired us. Dreams are important
in reminding us why we agreed to work so hard in the first place, and
they often call us into new areas of growth and struggle.
But it is possible to dream too much -
or in the wrong way. For me, the danger in dreaming comes in the form
of delusions of grandeur. Because I am gifted to see the big picture
with great clarity, I am often fooled into imagining that I can guide
and direct the flow of history. I almost inevitably write myself into
the script as an heroic figure, looking back to the great heroes of
my faith - Paul
of Tarsus, George
Fox, Margaret
Fell and James
Nayler, for example - and seeing their high-profile examples as
models for my own life.
This puts a lot of pressure on me.
Though identifying with past heroes can be empowering, it can also
lead to burn-out. This is probably because the heroes that I look up
to represent something far bigger than themselves. In a sense, these
high-profile men and women embody the witness of an entire community.
When I look to Paul of Tarsus, I am really admiring the early
Christian Church. When I am inspired by George Fox, it is actually
the entire constellation of early Quaker leaders that influence me.
While it is tempting to fixate on an
historical rock star like Margaret Fell, the reality is that she
played an important, but limited role in an extended community that,
as a whole, carried out an heroic mission. She did not do everything
herself; rather, she used those gifts that the Spirit gave her to
play the role that God assigned.
In my experience, this is at least part
of why Jesus counsels
us not to worry. He instructs us to focus on "today's
trouble" - the tasks, situations and people that we have been
given to care for in this time and circumstance. Keeping our eyes on
Jesus, and on the particular work he calls us into, there is freedom
from the sense of helplessness that comes when we imagine that we
have to do everything.
The easy yoke of Jesus is knowing that
we are responsible to only one Master, and that God has given each of
us particular gifts and responsibilities in this life. His easy yoke
is knowing that true heroism consists not of doing everything, but of
faithfully playing our part in a broader community. Our Savior's
burden is light because he frees us from the myth of the rugged
individual, with its assumption that each of us must be
self-sufficient. We come to experience that we were each made for a
purpose, and that God is ultimately in control.
2 comments:
Thanks Micah.
Yes, I can relate! I fell into the trap of trying to do everything that seemed important. This produced a physical collapse. I then began to understand the need to discern what I was called to do, and try to stick to that. It's become easier to see something very important to do, but conclude that it wasn't me God was calling to do it.
It's hard enough to be faithful to what God has called me. It becomes impossible when I take up all sorts of things to which God has not called me.
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