Jesus said - Day 7

Matthew 11:29

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.

I recently read this talk given by Elder Neal A. Maxwell.  It is such a powerful lesson in learning to take the yoke of the Savior upon us by "Enduring" the trials and challenges of life.  

These steps as outlined in the scripture can bring rest to our souls:

Take his yoke upon us

Learn of Him

Understand what is means to be meek and lowly in heart and strive to emulate His example

After doing those things, we can find rest unto our souls.  

Simple enough, right?

Wrong.  It is so very difficult.

From Elder Maxwell's talk:

By taking Jesus' yoke upon us and enduring, we learn most deeply of Him and especially how to be like Him.  Even though our experiences are micro compared to His, the process is the same. 

There are so many things to be endured:  illness, injustice, insensitivity, poverty, aloneness, unresponsiveness, being misrepresented and misunderstood, and sometime even enemies.  Paul reminds us that meek and lowly Jesus, though the Lord of the universe, "endure contradiction of sinners against himself."  

We tend to think only in terms of our endurance, but is is God's patient long-suffering which provide us with our chances to improve, affording us urgently needed developmental space or time.

Therefore, true enduring represents not merely the passage of time, but he passage of the soul - and not merely from A to B, but sometimes all the way from A to Z.  To endure in faith and to do God's will, therefore involves much more than putting up with a circumstance.

Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance.  Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling we are carried forward though battered and bruised.

Without patient and meek endurance we will learn less, see less, feel less, and hear less.  We who are egocentric and impatient shut down so much of our receiving capacity.  

How could there be refining fires without enduring some heat?  Or greater patience without enduring some instructive waiting?  Or more empathy without bearing one another's burdens - not only that other's burdens may be lightened, but that we may be enlightened through greater empathy?

The enlarging of the soul requires not only some remodeling, but some excavating.  Hypocrisy, guile and other imbedded traits do not go gladly or easily, but if we "endure it well" we will not grow testy while being tested.  Moreover, we find that sorrow can actually enlarge the mind and heart in order to "give place" expanded space for later joy.