“Carry each others burdens,
and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
(vs.2)

A woman accompanied her husband to the doctor’s office. After his checkup, the doctor called the wife into his office alone. He said, “Your husband is suffering from a very severe disease, combined with horrible stress. If you don’t do the following, your husband will surely die: “Each morning fix him a healthy breakfast. Be pleasant and make sure he’s in a good mood. For lunch make him a nutritious meal he can take to work. And for dinner prepare an especially nice meal for him. Don’t burden him with chores, and don’t discuss your problems with him, as this would only contribute to his stress. Try to relax your husband in the evening by wearing lingerie and giving him plenty of back rubs. Encourage him to watch some type of sporting event on TV. And see to it that you satisfy his every whim. If you can do this for 10 months to a year, I think your husband will regain his health completely.”

On the way home the husband asked his wife, “What did the doctor say?” “You’re gonna die,” she replied.

It is safe to say that some burdens are just too much to bear. When a man and woman get married they pledge to love each other for better or worse, rich or poorer, sickness and health. Promises spoken in sincerity become burdens for almost 50 percent of the couples. Bearing your own burdens is difficult enough not to mention bearing someone else’s. Yet that is what we are called to

“Carry each others burdens.”

When we bear or carry each others burdens we are planting seeds of compassion, of hope, and reassurance. While this indeed is difficult at times God gives us a promise

“you reap whatever you sow”
(Galatians 6:7)

If there is one thing you can say about people from NJ is that they love their vegetable gardens. I am willing to guess that the majority of people living in NJ have gardens. They may range in size from several acres to one tomato plant in a pot. No one needs to be told that if they want Jersey fresh tomatoes you have to plant tomato seeds. It goes without saying that if you want to be treated with respect, kindness, love, etc. you must sew attitudes and actions of respect, kindness, love, etc.

Unfortunately you are victimized by actions and attitudes of other people. You play by the rules, you treat people like you want to be treated and it doesn’t happen.

Paul said,

“Let us not become weary in doing good,
for at the proper time we will reap a harvest
if we do not give up.’

You might have read the following story on the internet. It is the story about Bob Butler lost his legs in a 1965 land mine explosion in Vietnam. He returned home a war hero. Twenty years later, he proved once again that heroism comes from the heart. Butler was working in his garage in a small town in Arizona on a hot summer day when he heard a woman’s screams coming from a nearby house. He began rolling his wheelchair toward the house but the dense shrubbery wouldn’t allow him access to the back door. So he got out of his chair and started to crawl through the dirt and bushes. “I had to get there,” he said. It didn’t matter how much it hurt.

When Butler arrived at the pool there was a 3 year-old girl named Stephanie Hanes lying at the bottom. She had been born without arms and had fallen in the water and couldn’t swim. Her mother stood over her baby screaming frantically. Butler dove to the bottom of the pool and brought little Stephanie up to the deck. Her face was blue. She had no pulse and was not breathing. Butler immediately went to work performing CPR to revive her while Stephanie’s mother telephoned the fire department. She was told the paramedics were already out on a call. Helplessly, she sobbed and hugged Butler’s shoulder. As Butler continued with his CPR, he calmly reassured her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I was her arms to get out of the pool. It’ll be okay. I am now her lungs. Together we can make it.”

Seconds later the little girl coughed, regained consciousness and began to cry. As they hugged and rejoiced together the mother asked Butler how he knew it would be okay. “The truth is, I didn’t know,” he told her. “But when my legs were blown off in the war, I was all alone in a field. No one was there to help except a little Vietnamese girl. As she struggled to drag me into her village, she whispered in broken English, ‘It okay. You can live. I will be your legs. Together we make it.’ Her kind words brought hope to my soul and I wanted to do the same for Stephanie. There are simply those times when we cannot stand alone. There are those times when we need someone to be our legs, our arms, and our friend!”

“Carry each others burdens,
and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

To carry each other’s burdens doesn’t mean we have to do something heroic. To carry each other’s burden means turning them into bridges that bring them into the presence and power of God. Every time you ask someone how they are doing or offer a prayer or provide words of encouragement you are helping to carry the other person’s burden. The youth group leaves on a mission trip this coming Saturday. I doubt very much that their actions will be like that of Viet Nam veteran Bob Butler. They will be scraping homes, running a kids camp, working with the elderly and homeless. By doing this with a heart of compassion they will be giving hope to the lost. They will be serving the weak and the young. They will be serving with passion those who are broken and down. Through their actions they will be preaching good news, they will be “Carrying each others burdens, and fulfilling the law of Christ.”

By supporting their mission trip and praying for them you are also enabling God’s servants.

It is easy to give up on people who don’t respond to the gospel or who refuse to see how sin has hurt them and those around them.

Yet, says Paul, we should never

“grow weary in doing what is right”
(v. 9).

Healing can only happen when the whole church team is focused on doing

“work for the good of all”
(v. 10).

We should never grow weary of turning burdens into bridges to God.