Take My Yoke

I can't remember where I heard this story and I don't exactly remember the specifics but there is a story of a man in the village who was always boasting about how he was the strongest and generally being an insufferable jerk about it. A seemingly much weaker man challenged him to a competition and made a bet that he could push something in His wheelbarrow to the edge of town that the strong man would not be able to push back. The strong man scoffed and then accepted the challenge. The man with the wheelbarrow arrived at the appointed time with his wheelbarrow completely empty. Then he asked the strong man to hop in the wheelbarrow and pushed him to the edge of town, and the strong man, try as he might, was not able to push the wheelbarrow back with him inside it. I think sometimes we are like the strong man, believing we can do anything without any help. But it doesn't matter how strong we are if we are stuck inside the wheelbarrow. We can push and pull and try shaking the wheelbarrow to pieces but we won't get very far. But the Savior has offered us another way. We can take His yoke, and He can pull us along when we are stuck in the wheelbarrow and cannot move ourselves. Taking the Savior's yoke upon us often means walking beside Him and working out our salvation side by side with our greatest supporter. But like another story about footprints in the sand, sometimes we don't have the strength to walk another step and we need our Savior to take the full weight and carry us and push us when we are stuck in the wheelbarrow. This is by design. Christ always knew that He would have to walk some parts of the path alone and He loves us so He takes on that burden, but thanks to His sacrifice, we never have to walk alone. He will always be there to walk beside us unless He sees how hard we are struggling and then He will say to us to hop in the cart and rest for a while and He will keep on pulling.