Carrying it together
St. Paul partners with the Appalachian Service Project (ASP), a non-profit organization in rural Appalachia. ASP focuses on home repairs to help people stay warmer, drier, and safer throughout the county. Every year, St. Paul sends a group of volunteers down annually to Jonesville, Virginia, the county seat of Lee County and this year, four of us made our way down to Virginia to serve with ASP.
Each volunteer group is assigned a project for the week and ours was roof repair. The house had a peaked roof layered with tin. The tin was held up by a frame of rafters and after years of wear and tear, the tin had started to deteriorate, and the rafters were sinking into the ceiling of the home, which left the house vulnerable to leaks. The solution was to make W-shaped trusses that would lift the rafters away from the ceiling. One of us called it “sharing the load,” which meant the weight of the tin, the rain, and in rare cases, snow, would be evenly distributed through these trusses to carry the weight of the metal and elements over time and keep the rafters from slipping from their position.
Our project prompted me to not only think of how the four of us shared the load of labor in preparing the rafters for new tin, but it also made me think about how hopeful it is that God is always present to meet us in the times that we need some kind of repair to make us feel whole again.
We shoulder a lot of burdens on our own. There was a recent death of a loved one, or now we’ve become a caregiver to a family member, there’s been pressing deadlines to meet at work, or the world around us may feel like it’s falling apart. Yet, we’re supposed to just keep moving forward. It might be because the world expects us to pull ourselves up on our own. We must be self-reliant and keep pushing through so we can be successful. It’s hard to ask for help or to depend on others to help us share the load of our burdens. We sometimes hear the phrase “I don’t want to burden you,” when we have something going on in our life. And yet, we also yearn for something to pull us back up when we feel ourselves sinking. We are looking for something to make us whole again.
In those moments when we feel like we’re sinking, the truth is that we are never carrying the burden alone. We don’t need to go looking for something. We already have a God there to share the load with us. It’s God who lifts us back up. Jesus reminds his disciples, and us, to “take my yoke upon you,” and that we’ll “find rest for our souls,” (Mt. 11:29). A yoke was used for oxen to pull a wagon or a plow, usually pulling in two—each ox shares the load of what they’re pulling. Maybe our burdens are concentrated in one area in life or across many areas, but we don’t have to carry our burdens alone anymore. God is right there, crafting us into a new framework that lifts us up and helps lift each other up as a community of faith that is always present and holding us up—no matter how heavy our burdens are. Through God, we are gathered to share the load together and find rest, trusting in God who is continuing to restore us to a creation of newness and wholeness.
