I couldn’t believe it!  I rubbed my eyes and took another look.  Perhaps I was merely seeing things.  Nope; there they were, in the bright daytime sun, two young raccoons were slowly making their way around our neighbor’s house.  It wasn’t normal to see a raccoon during the daytime because usually these rascals were nocturnal creatures.  But as I said, they were young and so I thought that perhaps they had somehow gotten lost from their mother and were roaming around trying to find their way home.

            This might not have been so strange if we lived in the country.  But we don’t; our house is smack dab in the middle of town.  There is a small patch of woods diagonally located to the North-East of our house and I presumed that was where they lived.  Who knows for certain?  I dismissed it as one of those rare occurrences and went on about my business, allowing these raccoons to do the same.

            I mentioned it to Debbie who responded similarly to what I had thought until a day or two later the pair showed up again, right in the same place.  I spotted them first then called for Deb to take a look.  She was as dumb-founded as I was.  Then she said something that made sense, “I wonder if they’re getting into our neighbor’s garden?”  They had planted a small garden in their backyard and it certainly made sense to me.  Who doesn’t like those fresh veggies?  I couldn’t blame them.  Deb took it upon herself to warn the neighbors about it and shortly after we could see the wife out in the garden looking things over.

            I can’t say that I’ve seen them since; perhaps they put something there to scare the raccoons away, but I’m not sure what that would be.  One time we had a garden and Debbie hung those aluminum pie pans in it to scare off the rabbits and raccoons.  But I would nearly swear that I saw one of those critters using the pie pans for a mirror because it didn’t seem like it made a bit of difference to me.  Anyway, those two raccoons made a believer out of me.

            We’re talking about turning a situation over to God.  Just like those raccoons that were out of place so turning a matter over to God seems just as out of place.  It’s not an easy thing to do - that is until we have actually come to the point that we do it.  Then we often wonder, “Why didn’t I just do it like that before?”  We people take so much on ourselves.  We fret and worry about things until we nearly make ourselves sick when many times there isn’t one blessed thing we can do about it.

            Jesus told us in Matthew 11:29-30, “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  These are words that bring peace to our hearts if we will let them soak deep down inside us.  They are words of wisdom that apply to all situations and especially to those beyond our control.

            Before we can actually make these words a part of our lives there’s a few things we’ve got to do.  In the last article we spoke on the subject of forgiveness.  The second thing we’ve got to do is to have faith or believe that when we turn something over to God that He is willing to take it.  Most of us would really like to put our worries in a box and hand them to God saying, “Here, maybe You can do something with this.”  And He can.  But more often than not we say we are going to turn them over to Him but while He’s trying to receive them into His hands we’re stubbornly hanging on to the other side of the box.

            Jesus was telling us in this passage of scripture that His work is not hard and is a pleasure to do.  The yoke was a wooden apparatus that was put around a steer and then hooked to a plow or wagon.  The animal or animals were expected to drag the plow through the hard dirt turning it over and making it soft so they could plant their crops.  Or if they were pulling a wagon often it was loaded to the point that the animal or animals had to really dig their hooves into the ground to get enough traction to pull it.  That’s us.  We place yokes upon ourselves that are often too heavy for us to bear.   But Jesus told us to come to Him because His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  We’ve got to believe that.  We need to go beyond speaking the words and be convinced in our hearts that we can have faith to know that once we’ve let go of that box and put on the yoke of Christ things are going to be taken care of.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.?  Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.