Today at construction I was getting discouraged. We’ve been doing the same thing everyday. Moving rocks. I wanted to do something other then construction because quite honestly, it is not my favorite. Today as we were working God said, “each rock is a burden.” So I picked up each rock and would think of a burden. I walked across the school property and I’d pray the Lord would take it from me. I would get to the ledge and throw it over. I let the burdens go.
I saw one rock in the pile and gave it a burden. I walked over to it and started trying to get it out. It looked small but as I worked to get it out the bigger and bigger I realized it was. I had to dig deep into the pile to get this rock out. What was originally a small rock turned out to be huge. The Lord started showing me how deep the hurts and pain were from this “little” burden. Once it was out I looked at it and thought how am I going to get this across the property. I tried to pick up the rock and couldn’t. So I rolled it. I rolled it all the way across the property and onto the ledge. It took forever. I was covered in dirt and had sweat rolling down my face. My back and legs hurt from leaning down and pushing the rock. My toe was throbbing because I had rolled the rock onto it.
My body was weak and hurting.
Such a representation of our lives when we carry burdens, it wear us out, it exhausts us. Sometimes when we are carrying burdens and we don’t even realize how heavy they are or how big they are because we have been carrying them around for so long. Sometimes we hide our pains and feelings and don’t deal with them because it’s better if we pretend it isn’t there, right?
I got to the end of the property, pushed the rock to the ledge, and looked back. I had pushed that rock so far, I couldn’t stop now. I was 100% exhausted though. I honestly wasn’t sure if I could get it over the ledge. I had to though. I was done with this. I took a deep breath and I pushed with what little strength I had left and shoved it over the ledge.
I didn’t have to carry it around anymore. It was gone. As the day went on, more and more people picked up large rocks and threw their burdens over the edge. We were free from burdens we had been carrying for years. You should have seen peoples faces when they turned around after throwing their “burdens” over the edge.
At the end of the day, when we were walking back to our house we saw the rock pile. How cool that so many of us had thrown our burdens over the ledge. We had given it up. We were done with it. We all walked home a little lighter then how we came.
WE WERE FREE.
