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Bearing WIth One Another-Joy Series #2


It’s in reading Ann Voscamp’s blog “A Holy Experience” that I get that maybe I’ve been viewing some of this wrong...
When I’m so overwhelmed with self pity and hopelessness, I feel like I can’t handle anyone else’s stuff.  How am I supposed to bear twice the burden I already am?  

“Burden is only a weight when borne alone.  When the burden is borne together, by a Body, the burden becomes bond — soul strengthener.” ( http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/04/when-life-burns-what-we-could-do-for-each-other/  )

But what if bearing another’s burden is actually a distribution of weight?
Because you’re bearing each other’s burdens rather than trying to bear your own.
So, rather than you and everyone else trying desperately to stand under the weight of their burdens, you all stand together and bear everyone’s burdens.  Then when in your moments of weakness, the strength of others helps you keep standing.
That’s what the Body does.

I continue reading...

“But Becomers, they don’t pull away from suffering, but lean into it, ‘knowing that suffering produces endurance and and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.’  (Rom. 5:2-3)”

There it is.  Oh that my soul would get this:
Suffering is not the antithesis of hope, but the beginning of the hope journey!
Why so often do I try to avoid suffering?  If only I saw it as leading to hope, I would not try to avoid it.



Comments

  1. Jessica Smith CulverApril 20, 2013 at 8:18 AM

    This is great, Allison! You are my kind of writer (thinker)! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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