Emily Freeman in Even This:
"One experience with God's goodness doesn't tie us to Him forever." (13)
A group of 7 gather each week one summer to talk about scripture. Every one in the group is in high school, except Emily. They gather and talk about what they have learned and they ask questions. One young man has been studying and discussing what it means to yoke yourself to the Lord.
On one particular night, he doesn't read a verse of scripture. Instead he talks of a high adventure camp he had just gone to. They'd gone on a hike and he had reached the top first. He sat down to recover and catch his breath. A leader invited those who were already at the top to head down again and help those who were farther behind and struggling. But he felt tired. And others got up to go. So he justified staying at the top.
The next morning, he felt guilt. He'd been learning and studying the yoke. The sharing of the burden with the Lord. And he'd had an opportunity to lighten someone else's burden--to share their yoke--and he had refused. He told them there, in Emily's backyard, that he had done the learning of it but not the living of it.
On the third day of the high adventure camp, a new opportunity to share burdens came. An opportunity to go and help a straggler. He went all the way back to the boy who was the farthest behind and took his pack. He told the group that he didn't even feel the weight...and he said that maybe that is what the yoke is like. Sharing the burden makes it lighter.
LESSONS LEARNED:
How often do I do the learning but not the living?
The words to Blake Gillette's song "I'll Be What I Believe":
"I'll have faith like brother Joseph and the strength of the pioneers
I'll be brave as a stripling warrior and like Nephi persevere
I will spread God's love to all I know and serveI will plead with my Father on my knees, I will be what I believe"
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