This is Pastor Ed and his family at the dinner trough.  This is one of those lovely summer evenings when dinner is unrushed and there are no meetings at church or ball practices for the children!  So they are doing something besides eating together at the dinner trough that is very important.  They are talking and listening to each other! 

“Daddy!” sputtered Larry.  “Guess what me and Loretta did today?”  “Loretta and I.” corrected his mother.  “And please remember not to talk with your mouth full.”  (big swallow) “Guess what Loretta and I did today?”

Larry told his daddy about how they had decided to make a fort out by the barn with that pile of branches.  “I had to carry all the big logs and that was a lot of work!” explained Larry. 

“I was worried that we might get hurt.” said Loretta.  “Maybe a log would fall on us.  And there were lots of big spiders!  Eeeek!”  “OH yeah,” continued Larry.  “Could you help us after supper Daddy?”

“I sure can.” said Pastor Ed.  And then Pastor Ed thought of a story from his own youth.  He said “I remember when I was about your age and my father taught me a lesson I’ll never forget.  One morning before he went to work he told me that he wanted me to move a pile of logs from the back pasture and place them at the rear barn door.  I went out there and grabbed each of those heavy planks with my bare teeth and dragged them individually across the field, up the hill and to the front of the barn.  It took me all day and I was exhausted.  I didn’t get them to the back of the barn yet when dad got home from work.

“ ‘Well son,’ my father said as he looked at the pile,  ‘what did you do the rest of the day?’  The rest of the day?  It took me all day to drag those humungous logs just to here!”

And THEN my father taught me the lesson.  We went to the barn where he asked me to help him get out an old wooden work sled.  We piled all those logs onto the sled.  I pushed and it sure was a lot easier with a sled!  After bumping into the tractor and the pig pen I figured out that I couldn’t see over the top of the sled. That’s when my dad taught me to wear a harness!”

“Ohhhh!” said Larry.  “A harness!  . . . what’s a harness?”  “Does it hurt?” worried Loretta.  She worries about everything!  Pastor Ed trotted out to the closet and brought back an old broken harness and showed it to Larry and Loretta. 

“This hardly weighs anything at all!” said Larry as he picked it up.  Loretta was a little afraid to try it.

Then Pastor Ed explained how a harness works.  You put it on like this and then you can hook it up to a sled and pull very heavy loads, much better than dragging logs with your bare teeth!  Or pushing a sled of logs.

And this is where Pastor Ed got even more excited about this lesson.  “You see, this is what Jesus meant when he told us to take his yoke, which is a lot like a harness, and to put it on.  “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus said. 

There are two kinds of heavy burdens in this story.  A harness helps carry the heavy burden of logs.  Jesus can help carry our heavy burden of worries.

“Does that mean I don’t have to worry about everything any more?” asked Loretta. 

“You must always be careful about what you do, but no, you don’t need to worry about everything.  Jesus can carry our worries for us.”  Then her daddy picked up Loretta and threw her into the air and she landed on his back ready for a horsy back ride!   Loretta called out “Giddy Up” and off they went around the pasture!  Daddies can carry heavy loads too! 

THE END

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