Feathers

by Daniel Miller

Feathers

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An old man stumbles across a wasteland. He is weary and appears to be carrying a heavy bag. The years of hard work and worry have beaten him down. It’s been a long hard road and we all have our burdens to bear. This old man shows all of the pain that life has handed him. He has endured many things in life and faced them with the grit and determination that it takes for a man to survive. Life has left a scowl on his face. It has been hard.

It wasn’t always so for this old man. “When I was young,” he remembers. “When I was young I didn’t have a worry in the world. My father made sure that I had all of the things that I needed. Food, clothing, a roof over my head, and all of the toys that I wanted. We had fun together every day.

The first time that I had any worry was one day when my mother called me in from play. I was a boy of ten at the time.”

“Johnny, time to come in.” Momma called.

Running to the door I came inside out of breath from play. Smiling I walked into the kitchen thinking it was time for supper. Mom’s cooking was delicious. She made the sweetest cookies and the best chicken in the world. She loved to cook for her family.

“Is it lunch time already? I’m getting hungry.” I asked.

“Supper will be done in about five minutes. Your father wants to talk to you. Wash up and then you can talk to him over lunch.” She loved her family.

During lunch, Dad told us that he would be going away for about two weeks on a business trip. I was to be a good boy and help mom take care of my two younger sisters.

“If you do a good job we can go fishing when I get back. Just you and me Johnny. Would you like that?” Dad asked.

“I can’t wait. Can we go out on the boat? I’ll be extra good if we can do that.” I replied.

“OK, we can even go out to our special spot and see if we can catch old blue eyes.” That was what we called the twenty pound catfish out on the lake. It was rumored that that old cat had been caught so many times and spit out the line at the last second that it couldn’t be caught, except by the best fisherman. Everyone claimed that they saw him smiling after he got away. “Do you think you can handle the task?”

“You just remember to bring the crawlers Dad. It will be just like carrying a feather.”

My dad didn’t come back from that trip. His plane went down and he didn’t survive. That was a feather that I carry to this day.[pic]

“Get him Johnny! He slapped me cause I wouldn’t let him kiss me.” Sue called out.

Johnny ran after the two bullies that his sister pointed to. These two had been chasing after his little sisters for a few years now and Johnny had beaten them down a few times already. They ran fast out into the traffic with Johnny close behind. Not looking for what was coming, Johnny felt the car hit him on the right side throwing him about ten feet.

Johnny came to in the hospital a few days later.

“Good to see you wake up boy. You had us all scared. You took quite a hit from that truck.” The doctor commented. “You will be fine in about a week. I’ll keep you here for a couple of days for observation just to be on the safe side. You won’t be running out it traffic too soon though. That leg will take about three months to heal. Although I don’t think it will be much of a problem now, that leg may cause some discomfort later on. You sure are one tough kid.[pic]

Becky stood across from John in the little chapel. This was the day that she was waiting for. She had found a good man and was tying the knot with him in front of both of their families. The best man was there as well as all of the guests. This ceremony would cost a pretty penny but it was a small price to pay for the new couple.

“Do you take this woman to have and to hold, to provide for her in sickness and in health, for better or worse as long as you both shall live?” the pastor asked John.

“I do.” John said with a big smile on his face. [pic]

John was working on the line in an assembly plant. This place turned out about a thousand cars a day and John was responsible for putting in the left headlight for each of them. He worked long hours and was dependable. His boss praised him frequently and had put in a good word for him for the foreman position that had just opened up. John would need the extra money with a young one on the way.

“Yo John!” the boss called out.

“What’s up Dave?” John asked with the many thoughts running through his head.

“I got a message for you. Your wife has called. You are to meet her at Mercy General. She went into labor. Get out of here and over there now. By the way, you can turn in your white helmet on the way out. Pick up a yellow hat on your way back in. You got the foreman spot. You’ll need the extra cash.” [pic][pic]

The look of worry was all over the man’s face. John kneeled over his son as the sirens got closer. Even after teaching him to look both ways before crossing the street, John Junior still had a problem of not looking where he was going. A speeding car swerved just barely clipping the bicycle but it was enough to throw John Junior about ten feet in the air.

The paramedic arrived moving John to the side. They worked on the boy doing what they could to help him. John rushed with them to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. [pic]

The lines now show on John’s face. His life has been one worry on top of another. After loosing his son, John couldn’t take the depression and has turned to whiskey as a coping tool. He was a loser determined to take the hard path carrying the load that life has given him. His other children no longer call because they can’t believe the man that he has become. At one time he had been a great father. Now he was nothing more than a disappointment to them. His wife, Becky has also left him and told him that if he ever wants her back, he is going to have to clean up his act. She can no longer live with a man who she can’t be proud of or trust. [pic][pic][pic][pic]

Thank God. John has given his life to Christ. One of his subordinates asked him to com to church so many times that he finally said ‘yes’. On that Sunday, John realized that he was making nothing but a mess of his life and needed Christ to forgive him of his sins and make a new man of him.

That was about six months ago. With the Lord’s help, John was able to give up drinking and has been sober for five months now. John never knew the comfort that the Holy Spirit could give him until that day. Somehow though John was still unhappy with life. He didn’t know why. He loved the Lord and was saved. He knew he was goin to Heaven when he died , but he still couldn’t find the peace that he saw in the other members of the church.

Mark, the one that had invited John to church, was always smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world. John walked over and pulled him aside after church services.

“What’s up John? Wasn’t that a wonderful message Pastor gave today? I love to hear the Gospel the way he preaches. He brings it all home and right where we can understand it. I especially loved the way he brought up how Paul was blinded and had to wait for God to send His servant to see again.” Mark asked.

“Mark, how do you do it?” John replied.

“How do I do what?” Mark asked.

“How do you keep a smile on your face when all of the world is a big mess? We’ve got wars going on, banks going under, and you even have a kid in the military over seas. How do you keep up the smile on your face with everything that’s going on?”

“John, I don’t have any more stress to worry about. I didn’t know how to deal with everything that was going on in my life until I finally understood two passages of Scripture. In Matthew chapter six Jesus tells about how God provides for the animals and the flowers and that he cares for us even more. Verse thirty three and thirty four says, ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ I don’t have to worry about the things of this world. God will give me what I need to do His will. Bring in chapter eleven verses twenty eight through thirty, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ These two Scriptures together tell us that all we need to worry about is to do God’s will. When you take your worries and burdens to Christ you must leave them there. Take up the burden that Christ gives you and leave the other stuff behind. That’s what God wants for you, a light burden taken up to do His will.

“That is how you have peace in your heart when everything around you is in turmoil. Give your troubles to Christ and believe that he will take care of them. That is why I can smile all of the time even when the world and the Devil give me the worst that they have. I know God is in control and that He will make things turn out to His will.”

John looked as if struck by lightening. Every time he asked God to help him with a problem he kept on worrying if God would take care of it. He never truly gave it over to watch how God would work it all out. That was the secret to having peace when everything else was falling around him. John felt as if a great weight was taken off of his back. All of the things that he carried with him all of these years. The feather weight burdens that had weighed him down and taken all of his strength to bear were gone.

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Throughout life everyone picks up burdens. Though they may seem light as a feather they can, over time, become that heavy burden that weighs us down and takes away the joy and peace of our salvation. Christ never wanted us to be defeated by the worries of the world. When you give your life to Christ, He changes you. His love gives you what you need to be saved and go to Heaven. It is His blood that washes away our sins.

After salvation many Christians fall away because they don’t realize that life will still be tough. The Devil is still out there like that ‘roaring lion seeking whom he may devour’. Christ is here to ease our burdens and to show us his love to endure. He is ‘the author and finisher of our faith’ and will give us the peace we need to endure the slings and arrow that the Devil throws at us.

The Devil tries to tell us not to let our troubles go and that we need to keep them. This way he can whisper in our ears that God is mean and won’t help us with our problems. So often, as Christians we take our cares and burdens to the Lord only to take them back up with us when we get up off our knees. These burdens wear us down and leave us wondering where God is, leaving space for the Devil to tell us that God doesn’t care. We must leave our burdens at the feet of Jesus and believe that He will give us what we need to endure and triumph over our problems. This is part of the peace that God promised us when Jesus said that he would send us a comforter.

When we believed on Christ for our salvation, we gave our sinful lives to Him to use as He desires. He gives us a burden to reach out to the sinful world around us and bring the lost to Him. This is the yoke that he wants for us to have. He is the one that opens peoples’ hearts and gives them the desire to have the joy that we as Christians live with. If you have a burden that is weighing you down, take it to the Lord and leave it there. Take up the yoke that He has for us because His ‘yoke is easy and His burden is light’.