The Bible is so beautiful. Every word has depth and breadth that often gets lost in the English translation from the original Hebrew and Greek.
I was pondering this verse recently…
Matthew 11:28-30 – New King James Version
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light
The word “easy” hovered off the page.
It wasn’t easy for Paul.
It wasn’t easy for Peter.
It wasn’t easy for Stephen.
It isn’t easy for Muslim converts.
It isn’t easy for the underground church in China.
It isn’t easy for the Christians being murdered in Somalia.
The words of a Muslim convert featured in the documentary “Sheep Among Wolves”…
“The only person I will ever evangelize to is the man who will murder me.”
Not easy.
Elizabeth Elliot’s husband was a murdered missionary and yet she continued on with missions.
Not easy.
In fact, I don’t know one Christian who would say that their walk with the Lord has been easy.
Jesus tells us we will be hated.
He says we will be persecuted.
He says “Get your armor on, because this is war”
No war has ever been easy.
So I knew there had to be more…something I was missing.
I felt a nudge from Holy Spirit to look this passage up in the original Greek.
The word used here for easy is…
chrēstos
It’s only ever translated once as EASY.
The other translations for this word are…
Good – Luke 5:39
Kind – Luke 6:35
Gracious – 1 Peter 2:3
And then it made sense.
His yoke upon me is good, kind, gracious, and better.
Please research the word so you know I am not attempting to change scripture here. A simple Google search will do.
You will find that it does, in fact, mean “kind”.
Better is another translation for the word chrēstos.
His yoke is so much BETTER than the yoke of the world.
He took the heavy yoke upon Himself.
That is true.
That has always been true.
That will forever be true.
Easy?
No.
Worth it.
Absolutely.
For He is good, kind, gracious, and better.
To learn more about Heidi and her Kingdom passion, visit Kingdom Come Home
Featured Image by Marcus Dall Col on Unsplash
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