Carry Your Burdens No More

Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, “How shall we return?”
​                                                 - ​Malachi 3:7 

Malachi was a minor prophet who plays a major role in our Advent wait in that he asks a fairly basic question. One I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves a few times in life.

​“How shall we return to be with God?” 
 
So many of us carry guilt, shame and other baggage that all we see are those things keeping us away from God. But didn’t God come to be with us, to take away these burdens we carry?   

In the preceding verse, he writes that “For I the Lord did not change. Therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.” 

God’s steadfast love does not change. It is today for us what it has always been throughout all of time. God did not come to be with us to condemn us or cause us to perish. In Christ, God came to be with us, to love us where we are. 
 
“How shall we return to be with our Lord” then?  A good place to start might be by letting go of those things you believe are keeping you away from being loved by God. Every day is a good time to take inventory of what you need and don’t need to be in a right relationship with our Lord.  What then are you holding on to? Where in your life is your back turned towards rather than away from God?
 
Advent is a time of active waiting, a time to be with our Lord. As we move through the various spaces and places of Anamesa, we work together to uphold the love of God in all that we do. When our hands are full of God’s love, we don’t have the room to carry those burdens.