WHAT is a burden? Oh, you say, if mother gives me a parcel to carry for her, that is a burden. I suppose every boy or girl who reads this paper has carried a burden, and perhaps you were glad to be able to set it down; especially if it was a heavy burden.
Where I am sitting writing this story I can see boys and girls coming home from school carrying burdens. There goes Jack and Patsy, and here comes Gerald and Walter running to catch up to them, and each of them has a burden. Yes, they are carrying some school books, for they have homework to do tonight. Some time ago I stood outside a school in the village of Dickson, in the West Indies, and watched the boys and girls start for home, and many of them had burdens too, but they didn't carry them in their hands. They put their books on their heads! If you have never seen his done, you would wonder how it, would be possible, but those boys and girls are very clever at balancing their burdens on their heads, and they walk many miles will heavy burdens of all kinds and never seem to get tired, or stop to take the burden off. One day I stopped to talk to a lady who had a sewing machine balanced on her head! I'm sure I couldn't even make anything stay on my head at all!
All this has made me think of another burden which many people carry around with them so long that they hardly know they have a burden at all. It is the awful burden of sin. It is not carried in your hand, or on your head, but in your heart, where only the eye of God can see it. But that terrible burden will keep you out of heaven and drag you down to hell, unless it is removed.
How easy it is to stop and set down a big parcel, and rest your arm. And how easy it is to stop and lift the heavy burden from the strong head that carries it. But how can a boy or girl get rid of the burden of sin which weighs on the heart? Maybe you have had it there so long that you can't even feel it, but there it is just the same. Listen to the words of the Lord as He invites you to have your burden removed.
Messages of the Love of God 8/31/1952