“A couple of weekends ago I went to London to help my son, Richard, sort out his flat. At the beginning of January he is relocating to Singapore for 3 years. On Saturday morning we started to make different piles of his belongings. Items for the skip, items for recycling, items for his local charity shop, items he wanted to keep but not take with him to Singapore and then lists of things which would be moving with him.
Many trips were made up and down stairs,(thankfully his brother arrived to help so I didn’t have to do too many trips). I started to get slightly concerned about the pile of items coming to Felixstowe. As usual I had my little suitcase with me containing the essentials required for a couple of days away but definitely not big enough to hold a lot of the growing pile.
To make matters worse Richard is a keen cook who during lockdown obtained a huge number of heavy cookery books. Needless to say my case was packed with so much stuff that I could hardly lift it. On the journey home Richard had to come with me from Clapham to Liverpool Street as I couldn’t have managed the stairs at the tube station if I had had to carry my heavy load on my own. There was a heavy bag perched on top of the case and another to be carried.
This got me thinking again about people having to flee their homes in a rush. What do you take and what do you leave behind? My load was heavy but I had help to carry it. Sometimes we can forget that Our Lord is always there to help us carry our heavy burdens.
When we rely on him our loads become much lighter and easier to carry. Joshua 1 v 9 says, “Be strong and of good courage: do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”