It is often said that the Gospel afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.  Often times the Scripture selections for Sundays afflict us; they challenge us; they warn us, as any good father would do.  However, today the Scriptures, clearly, comfort us.  Jesus was looking at the people of His time when He said, “Come to me all you who are burdened and find life wearisome and I will refresh you.  Take My yoke upon your shoulders and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.  My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  He looked at the people of His time and knew they were, indeed, heavily burdened.  You can imagine in Palestine in the time of Christ the great, great majority of the people were very poor.  A few were very, very wealthy.  There was a small middle class but by and large, the great majority of people were poor.  They lived from week to week, from hand to mouth.  The road network was not good.  The land, although was able to support the people, it certainly was not very lush in terms of agriculture.  Many people were poor.  Additionally, Jesus knew the burden they carried with the “yoke of the law’ as Paul calls it.  In addition to the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people had 600 or more other laws and regulations that they tried to follow to the letter of the law.  Indeed, I think it was impossible to even know all of the law, much less to follow it.  And so, He looked on them.  He felt compassion for them and He said these beautiful words to them. 

Twenty centuries later, He looks on us and He sees a people who are also heavily burdened and tired, who have difficult lives.  Christ knows your burdens as well as He knew the burdens of the people of His day.  You do carry heavy burdens.  You run out of strength at times.  You have many concerns over family, children, jobs, money, health, aging parents, and relationships.  Life is wearing us out.  So what do we do?  We follow Jesus’ prescription.  We trust Him.  We come to Him.  We try to be humble and appreciate our simple lives and we try to serve others.  We take the yoke up with Christ and pull with Him to serve others.  He says, “Come to Me, trust Me.  Don’t carry your burdens by yourself.  Some burdens you were not meant to carry.  Some things are beyond your control.”  We often say, remember you are not the general manager of the universe.  This is not a copout.  I’m not saying don’t be a responsible person but be responsible for what you are capable of and that is not the universe.  It’s your one little piece of life.  Trust God’s forgiveness for your mistakes of yesterday and His providence for tomorrow’s needs and then live this day.  Just live this day.  The Bible says, “Tomorrow has burdens enough of its own.”  So live this day, this Sunday, July 6.

Jesus tells us to be humble.  He said, “I am gentle and humble of heart.”  He prescribes that for us.  Jesus had no ego problems.  He didn’t try to make a good impression.  He did not try to be important.  Preoccupation with the self is exhausting and many, many, suffer from that.  They are preoccupied with themselves.  You know that in Spanish the word for worry is preocupado, to be preoccupied, to worry.  Humility means to lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, in Jesus Christ.  Let Jesus take you off your own hands.

Finally, He says serve others.  Sometimes young people come to see me and they say, “You know I’m going to college and I’m trying to think about my future.  Do you have any advice?”  And I will say, “First of all, you have to determine what you are going to do.  God doesn’t have a little plan that you must figure out.  His plan is that you love Him and then using your talents and free will, make your choice.  I’ll guarantee you one thing that if you make a decision for your future that serves others you’ll be happier.”  It’s just the truth and there is a reason for that.  Jesus knows what it is.  He says, “Get in the harness with me.  Take up My yoke.  Help Me to do My work.”  And the reason is because service to others is a tonic.  Forget what it means to the ones being served, it’s a tonic to the one who serves.  We hear that every year when our young people come back from Heart Work Camp.  You know they were there in San Antonio, Texas.  No one would go on vacation, I don’t think, to San Antonio, Texas in the summer.  They have huge, really big bugs in San Antonio, Texas.  Our kids go down there and they work really hard and they sweat.  One day they go to Sea World but the rest of the time, they really work hard.  It’s a long journey and they come back glowing.  They are so happy.  Why?  Because they served others.  They feel good about themselves.  You heard the testimony last week from Our Little Brothers and Sisters, the pilgrims we sent to Honduras.  They came back with that same glowing feeling because they had served others.  Jesus knew that.  He made us like that.  He made us to serve and in so doing we’ll find peace.

You know life has its ups and downs, its good days and bad days, its joys and its sorrows.  We all know that.  You know they say that the beginning of maturity is when you wake up one day and say life is hard.  We all know it has its ups and downs but it is important that we don’t make life any harder than it is.  I think we do that to a very great extent today.  If you told the people in Jesus’ time about the modern conveniences we have, air conditioning, computers, washing machines, and dishwashers, and whatever.  All that stuff, automobiles, they probably would have said that you must just relax all the time.  Yet the more we have the more we seem to need and want and the busier we are.  We make life harder than it is because we have expectation inflation.  I’m trying not to sound like Jesse Jackson but that’s something he might say.  Expectation inflation.  We have a zero-defect mindset.  I know parents and you know parents that expect a 4.0 G.P.A. from their kids.  Anything else is not acceptable.  That’s ridiculous!  Now apparently you can get a 4.3, I don’t know how that happens.  That is not right.  By the way, there was a study years ago – many of the most successful people in our country were “C” students.  Call me 2.0 Carney.  I’ve come a long way.  We expect perfection from ourselves and that’s the problem.  Then we expect perfection from others.  I played golf Wednesday with a house builder, a good one and he pleases his customers.  I said, “Did you ever have an impossible customer.”  He said, “Oh, yes.  There was this man and he just had a complaint about everything.  Everything had to be perfect and he was running around with a magnifying glass looking at things.”  He used an expression about him I hadn’t heard before.  He said, “He was a perfect man in an imperfect world.”  Doomed to be miserable.  We can’t do that.  We need to be satisfied with what we have if we have enough.  Most of us have enough.  We don’t need more and more and more.  We need to appreciate the blessings we have.

I‘m going to tell this little story.  I think you’ve heard it in one version or another but I think it makes the point better than I can.

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.  Inside the small boat were several large, yellow-finned tuna.  The American complimented the Mexican on his fine catch and asked how long it took to catch them.  The Mexican replied, “Only a little while”.  The American then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”  The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family today.”  The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”  The Mexican fisherman answered, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my kids, say my prayers, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life.”  The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you.  You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat.  With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you can buy several boats.  Eventually you would have a fleet of boats.  Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you can sell directly to a processor, eventually opening your own cannery.  You could control the product, processing, and distribution.  You would need to leave this small coastal village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, eventually New York where you would run your ever expanding enterprise.  You can imagine what the Mexican fisherman is looking at him, you know.  (Laughter)  The Mexican fisherman asked, “But how long will that take?”  To which the American replied, “Fifteen or twenty years.”  “But then what?” asked the Mexican.  The American laughed and said, “Well that’s the best part.  When the time is right you could announce an IPO and sell your company’s stock to the public and become very rich.  You’d make millions!”   “Millions,” he said“,Then what?”  The American said, “Then you could retire, move to a small coastal fishing village, where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, say your prayers, take siesta with your wife, Maria, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play you guitar with your amigos.” 

It’s a good and funny story because it’s a true story.

I was talking to a friend the other day, “You know the irony in life for many people.  When you’re young and really know how to spend money, you don’t have any.  And then you get old, all broken down, you got plenty of money and you can’t spend it.”  That doesn’t seem right.  Therefore, my advice to you is spend your money.  Remember the Church gets 10%.  That way you can spend the rest with no feelings of guilt. 

Jesus knows our burdens and He helps us carry our burdens.  I think He would ask us today not to impose any more burdens than we already have.  “Come to me all you who are burdened and find life wearisome and I will refresh you.  Take My yoke upon your shoulders and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble of heart.  My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”