The Purple Sweater

Anyone who has ever done laundry knows the reward of coming to the bottom of the washer   and finding change.  At our house anything found at the bottom of the washer is a tip for the laundry lady.  It helps to make up for those times when I open the washer and find that the contents of someone’s pockets had not been change but a tissue.

Recently, on a particularly full laundry day, I opened the washer to discover that there had been tissues in somebody’s pocket.  I say tissues, because one tissue couldn’t possibly have caused that much havoc.  Every piece of clothing was plastered with white lint.  As I shook the clothes out, the floor became covered.  The lint on the floor billowed around like tumbleweeds as I walked through the laundry room.   What a mess!  The lint came off most of the clothes pretty easily, but one sweater in particular came out looking really rough.  The poor fuzzy purple sweater, it was matted and pilled with tissue lint.   It was going to take more than a shake to clean it off. 

Life can sometimes be so much like laundry.  It can give us wonderful surprises and gifts or it can give us experiences that leave us a little worse for wear, feeling ruined like that poor messed up sweater.    Some experiences can be easy to ‘shake off’ and some we can’t shake it off so easily, we feel like we have been pulled through a knothole.   Like the sweater, we are helpless to get rid of our baggage and hurt on our own.  Imagine someone saying “that sweater is a mess; it should try harder to fix itself.”  Foolish isn’t it?

  Jesus invites us in Matthew 11:28-30 ²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” He is telling us,” I’ll take your burden; you don’t need to carry this anymore, rest from your load.”   The yoke he has for us means freedom from the load we are carrying.  It means we are free from striving for perfection, the impossible, and free to allow Him to change us.  We no longer have burden of trying to do it ourselves.  His yoke means we don’t have to carry the burdens and hurt of our past.  We are freed up to rest in His grace. 

Are you exhausted from striving and trying?  Has your past left you a mess?   Give up your burden to Him and let Him do the work.   I am so thankful I don’t have to have the stress of striving and working to fix myself.   Thank you Jesus for your rest, I am helpless without you.

Now, I have to go pull some fuzz balls off a sweater.