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Burdens...

             Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. … for each one should carry their own load. (Galatians 6:2 & 5)

 

One of the websites I found about burdens and loads suggested that loads are things in our lives as a part of life. If you reside in a building, one of your loads is the care and maintenance of that building. Burdens are described as often being boundary problems.[1] 

Another site says, “Burdens are those things that come into our lives usually for a season.  The word that Paul uses for a load describes the responsibilities that belong to us.”[2]

Still another says,

“The idea is that a load is the day-to-day challenges that occur quite naturally, ie., housework, schoolwork, parenting, connecting with people, what to eat for dinner, laundry, a date, being date-less, work, a flat tire…

A burden is the heaviness we carry around because of the consequences of someone else’s choices, a traumatic event that happened ten years ago, a not-so-good choice we made five years ago, a childhood experience that we interpreted as devastating…”[3]

The dictionary isn’t much help, either. It describes a burden as a load. The best that can be said apart from a greater understanding of Greek than I have is that there are loads and burdens. People are to take responsibility for their own loads and are to share responsibility for others’ burdens or help them with them.

I’ve also heard that loads are negative things such as the consequences of our mistaken choices or “the cross we must bear.” Burdens, on the other hand, have been described as concerns for the well-being of some other person or group. One might have a load of guilt, but a burden for the unreached in eastern Africa or southern Asia. Used this way, the whole question returns to the gnostic dualism of physical v. spiritual. Loads are physical or temporal and therefore bad; burdens are spiritual or eternal and therefore good. This is probably the worst of the explanations given.

The more I think about it, the more I think that a load is not what we are responsible for but what we can handle. My truck is supposed to have a 5Klb load capacity. If it’s loaded right, it can handle that much weight. If I pick up two 15 lb. dumbbells, I can do exercises and even shift them to one arm so I can do something with the other. But if someone loads my truck with 6Klb., or me with something that weighs more than 50 lbs., chances are that both the truck and I will be burdened and need some help.

Two specific kinds of help come to mind. The first is to evaluate the load, removing things that aren’t necessary or are even harmful. Another is to help carry the part of the load that has become a burden. This might be done just by communicating love in the way that the burdened person understands love. It might involve physical labor, encouragement or education. But the point is that we find some way to reduce weight, worry, stress, strain, or complication.

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