Releasing Your Burdens

How do you deal with the painful encounters and fragmented relationships? With angry, rebellious people? With divorce, sickness, bitterness, and death? With loneliness? With war? With the circumstances that you never dreamed would be part of your life? With the weight of the burden that has worn out your emotions and left you physically exhausted? How do you handle it?

The Bible, our love letter, tells us in Psalm 55:22, "Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you." Let's paraphrase that: "Get rid of that burden; throw it on the Lord; fling it at His feet. Once you have done that, He promises that he will be your sustenance."

Here is a seeing-is-believing exercise for giving your burden to the Lord: Go to a spacious field with a helium balloon, a felt-tipped pen, a brick, a piece of paper, and an envelope. Write as much about the situation as you need to on the balloon in order to identify it with your problems. Now hold the brick and the balloon straight out in front of you. Tell the Lord everything about your problem until your arms are hurting so bad that you can't tell if you are crying over your burden or because of the pain in your arm. When you can't hold your burden any longer, let the brick drop to the ground, and let the balloon soar into the sky. Watch it disappear. Then take the paper and write on it this statement: "On _________ (date), at ___________(time), I gave my burden to the Lord, and He took it." Put the sheet in the envelope, seal it, and print "God" and the date on the envelope. Don't lose that envelope; you will pick it up many times and thank God for taking this burden from you.