A True Partnership (12/10/2025)

Recently a disagreement with a friend took a turn it shouldn’t have when I walked away rather than trying to resolve our difference. Within moments, I knew I’d chosen the wrong path, but I wasn’t sure quite how to make a correction. I walked away because I didn’t want to argue, but almost instantly I realized that silence wasn’t the better path. Later in the day, when I had a few minutes, I called to apologize, but that conversation didn’t go so well, either. It took two days for us to connect well and lovingly and both realize that the other “meant well,” to forgive one another, and pick up the threads of the friendly partnership again.

Turns out, both of us were having really trying and stressful times. It’s not unusual, I have found, during stressful times, we can often behave poorly with the ones we hold most dear. A psychologist once told me it’s because we know this treasured and loved one will forgive us. At times, we are so upset with life and others, but keep trying to manage, and then we’re with someone who isn’t the problem, but they can get the full brunt of our frustrations.

Partnerships were never easy, but in this modern world they can become even more difficult as more and more we find ourselves overcommitted or overstressed. And no where is this partnership more essential than with our loving Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today’s gospel reading reminded me of this with a loving thump. Christ desires a partnership with me, one that benefits me more than Him, one in which He will give me peace and rest, but it requires me to surrender to Him and trust. He asks me to bring Him my problems and trust Him to help me carry them and resolve them. This partnership requires that I allow Christ to work with me, in me, and through me daily, but most especially when I am struggling.

During this second week of Advent when our focus is on peace, the peace that only Christ can bring to us and to our world, let us all consider His loving offer to us found in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

If we can open ourselves to His invitation, if we can learn from Him by letting Him walk with us, yoked together, perhaps we can begin to live His more gentle way of life. Perhaps in time we ourselves can take on His demeanor, His humility, His meekness. Perhaps we can find the true rest we so long for as we seek to carry our worldly burdens.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.