One big suitcase

A couple weeks ago, I was flying from Frankfort, Germany to Brussels, Belgium with a fairly big piece of luggage because I needed three weeks worth of stuff…and a girl’s gotta have enough shoes, you know.

Anyway, it was 220 EURO to check my bag. Yep, no joke—some serious excess baggage fees for those extra heels that I didn’t wear once in three weeks. (Don’t even do the conversion to dollars because it will just depress you on my behalf.)

Sometimes my passion for the people of the City of Detroit feels a little heavy too…at least 220 EURO worth of heaviness. Sometimes I feel bad about that and wonder if I’m making it heavier than it needs to be…doesn’t God say His yoke is easy and His burden light?

But maybe that is an easiness and a lightness that looks different…maybe some days it looks like a big suitcase that without the fancy spinney 360 degree wheels, there would be no chance of moving it. But with the wheels…well, you’ve still gotta pull, but you’ll get where you need to go.

Here are some words to a song by Sara Groves that express what I’m trying to say:

Lord I have a heavy burden of all I've seen and know
It's more than I can handle
But your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bones
and I cannot let it go
And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

Lord it's all that I can't carry and cannot leave behind
it often overwhelms me
but when I think of all who've gone before and lived the faithful life
their courage compels me
And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharaohs court
I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

I see the young missionary and the angry spear
I see his family returning with no trace of fear

I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the sisters standing by the dying man's side

I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come and kicking down the door

I see the man of sorrows and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them