Yoked to Jesus

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“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” †  Mathew 11: 28-30  What is the labour and burden that Jesus is asking me to deal with? Perhaps I have to let go of the compulsive burden (or is it a sort of entitlement?) that my spouse and children should choose a spiritual path that I know to be right. Jesus accompanied Judas Iscariot to the very end but never deprived him of his freedom to choose his own destiny. Jesus on the other hand, uninterrupted by Judas's choice to reject him, continues to accomplish his mission. He does become a victim of Judas's betrayal but he seldom takes on the victim's identity. In divine wisdom, Jesus chooses to die in our place (and that of Judas) in a redeeming act of love. Rather than being compelled to fix those whom God has entrusted to my headship by m

Unwavering focus

We get distracted and stray away if we have a wavering focus. Instead if we have a single focus in mind, for life, every situation, be it negative or positive, will be a stepping stone, to inch closer to that focus. This is independent of what happens to us and around us.

For a Christian, our life's focus is union with Christ. This begins here on earth and culminates gloriously in eternal life. Wrong focus is like wearing a dark glass and forgetting it is there. Everything looks dark and we presume the darkness to be normal and stray away.

Suppose ones focus is to create wealth. Every person, situation, opportunities that comes his way, will be used to achieve his focus. In the process, he fail to  attend to the focus of others. But if our focus is Christ, we will create wealth and  still focus on Christ. This enables us to share, empower, create opportunities for others to grow and thus draw closer to our focus. And at the same time, enjoy a great deal of the providence of God.

Wrong focus can wreck our lives. A statement like "every man who knocks the door of a brothel is looking for God" can create a chronic womanizer, if his focus is sexual pleasure. However true, the statement may be, if it has to impact the way it ought to, the soil it falls, should have the right focus.

This is why Jesus tells the story of the sower where the seeds fall on the wrong places and die. But that which fell on the fertile soil, yielded a plentiful harvest. One cannot blame the death of the seeds on the sower. It was the wrong focus that killed what would have been life giving.

You may ask why not then the sower sow his seeds only in the fertile soil and reap a good harvest. Alas if He did that, you and I would have never had a chance to refocus our lives on Christ, the Good sower. He will continue to sow good seeds in all kinds of soil because he loves every one of his children. It is up to us to grab the opportunity and have the right focus

Lord, may our focus never waver

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