Heavy
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah. – Psalm 32:4 NKJV.
He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy. – Lamentations 3:7 NKJV.
This morning I viewed a spectacular scene as we had received heavy snow in western Oklahoma. God indeed had painted His world with the beauty of snow. The branches of the trees were heavy with snow, weighed down. With the snow and the branches being so heavy with snow, and my having a mild case of flu; it reminded me of a time while I was working in the oilfield. This occurred a few months after the bust had come to the oil and gas industry in the 1980s. To survive financially, after the work had ended for my business, I had gone back to work for a company I had worked for in the past. I was thankful to have any kind of job and if I wanted to keep my employment I had to be there every time I was needed whether I was sick or not. It appeared that even the company I was working for might soon go out of business and lay off all of their employees. That did happen, but it was several months later.
In 1983, I was an operator for a casing inspection unit which used electronic sensors and radiation to find defects in the casing before it was placed into a well. During this time, I was worried about our financial situation, keeping my job, what I would be doing, and even where I would be living in the future. One particular job was in freezing weather and it was especially difficult. I was on 24-hour-call, and when I was called out for the job I had a severe respiratory infection of some kind. This infection made it feel like there was a heavy weight upon me, and every step, and every move took much effort. This went on for several days, and by this time Jeanie and our sons also had the infection. When Jeanie took the boys to the doctor, he gave her a prescription for me too. After a few more days, about the time the job was completed, I had started finally feeling well again. It had been a miserable few days, and I had felt like God’s hand was heavy upon me.
This old world has a way of burdening us. We become burdened with worries about many things: our health, our family’s health, our finances, our job, fears of the violence occurring around us, and most of all with sin. We try to cope, we work hard, we try to do the right thing and it still seems like everything is coming apart at the seams. Maybe this was some of what David was experiencing when he wrote Psalm 32 where he says, “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For my iniquities have gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me (Psalm 38:3-4 NKJV).” David had many things in his life that were bearing down upon him, including his sin. It was even affecting his health.
Is the weight of this world heavy upon you? Is your health, or finances, or employment, or sin, or something else giving you an ever increasing burden to carry? David found the answer for his situation as he says in the first two verses of Psalm 32, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Give your burdens to Jesus! Do you think that you have too many problems for God to handle? Do you think that you have sinned too great or too much for God to forgive you through Jesus? God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-23).” Your problems, your sins, are not great enough to exhaust the mercies of God, because His mercies “…are new every morning.”