What is Your Burden?

“Come and bring the breakthrough we surrender to You, all our hope is in You, God.”

Passion

Yesterday morning I was weeding around an Olive Tree and I dropped my pickaxe on the ground. I got down on my knees and I started to cry. It wasn’t just a few tears streaming down my face, I was sobbing. Everything that I didn’t know I was holding in earlier, all came crashing down. I couldn’t hold it in anymore..

I feel as if I’m carrying a burden and the burden keeps getting heavier and heavier the longer that I’m here. The burden of breaking hearts I feel for Palestinians, the burden of the oppressors who I feel seem to be blind, the burden of injustice and how I ask God, “How can something so wrong, be right?” This burden often feels overwhelming, but I know because of the grace of God I have not had to carry it alone.

I looked up with my watery eyes at the skyline and I saw the Israeli settlements around me and I started to cry more. It broke my heart just imagining within the next year the number of homes that will be built around this beautiful land that I’ve gotten to volunteer for. I closed my eyes and I said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

These past 3 weeks I’ve had the blessing of living with a Muslim family in Aida Camp. Aida is the the second largest refugee camp in Bethlehem. Living in a refugee camp for the very first time has brought me so much blessings, frustrations, joys, sorrows, love, guilt and peace. But if there is one word I had to describe my time in Aida, it would be family. Family is the kindness of my host mom repeatedly saying, “This is your home, you are like my children.” Family is going on night walks with my host sister and getting to witness how she confidently wears her heart on her sleeve. Family is evening conversations with my host dad about the deeper meaning of what gratitude and loving your neighbor looks like. Family is a kind of love that made me not want to say goodbye to them.

The hearts I have been touched by, the personal stories I’ve heard, the numerous ways God has changed me from the inside that I can’t even recognize who I was before this trip. God’s been good to me and I praise Him every day for it. As I continue to embrace this burden for this beautiful place He has given me to carry, it’s a continuous reminder how this is just a glimpse to all the rest of the burdens Christ chose to carry to that cross for us.

I’m grateful God doesn’t call us to carry every single burden in this world but I believe God does call each of us to carry different burdens. Easter is approaching and I want to challenge you with the same questions I have been challenging myself with recently..

1.) “What burden are you carrying?”

2.) “What burden is God asking you to carry?”

3.) “Is the burden you are carrying now, maybe the wrong burden God is asking you to carry?”

You can carry a personal burden that will change you, but when you carry a burden for something that is happening in the world, it will change you in a humbling way.

Caili