Weight Lifting

There is a weight that comes with caring for those you love. Parents feel it, as do doctors, nurses and employers—and a whole host of others. How should we respond to the weight of responsibility to love others? Is there a contradiction between the responsibility to love and the command to love one another ‘freely’?

I wonder if doctors find it easier to care for the sick and those in need once they retire? I wonder if nurses feel more “nursey” when they have finished nursing?

There is something of a weight that sits heavy on the shoulders when serving others moves from a free response from the heart to, “it’s your job.”

Paul felt this weight and even the urge to shake the burden from off his shoulders. But he did not see the weight of loving others as a thing to be overcome. He saw loving others as a thing to be endured for their sake.

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. (2 Timothy 2:10)

Paul was not under the illusion that caring about others made life free and breezy. He did not see loving others as somehow incompatible with pain, struggle and weakness. In fact, it was affection for the flock that often caused his anxiety.

For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. (2 Corinthians 2:4)

Paul was given an open door for the gospel in Troas (2 Corinthians 2:12-13). But his anxiety over Corinth was so great that when he did not get word from Titus about the state of things in Corinth, he left what was shaping up to be a thumping revival in order to tend to the needs of his Corinthian brothers and sisters.

The world looks for love with no strings, no cost. We sometimes find it easier to love when there is no call or expectation. We want to have it both ways. We want to enjoy love in a free and uncommitted or even irresponsible way because we find the weight of responsibility that goes with love too heavy to bear.

But true love is a great weight. Not always, but often. It’s a burden when we are told to care.

Jesus knew this weight. It was the weight of His Father’s love for His children that brought Him here, and it was the weight of His love for us that nailed Him to a tree.

It was painful. It was His responsibility. And it was real love. Love, the weight of which, Paul says, will one day lead to an eternal weight of glory. Love. The weight of which Jesus now carries for us who struggle to love.