The easier way to live

Are you tired, worn out, ready to quit, void of energy and enthusiasm to continue tomorrow? If so, it’s time to unburden your mental back from the weights of the world, let the material concerns go, follow Christ, and be free!

It’s time to wear a lighter yoke!


I had a major epiphany this week when I heard the words of Jesus, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest….For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”


“My burden is light!” Jesus said.


Oh, I couldn’t believe how the meaning of those words had eluded me for so many years. When I heard them this time, my thought flooded with their meaning like never before. I felt I knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.


I thought about the depressing and painful yokes of the world I had cast off over the decades and replaced with the yoke of Christ. Oh, what freedom, what freedom comes when you serve Christ rather than mammon!


For example, I thought back to life on the farm. Farming is a good life, but there were certain aspects of it that I dreaded. For instance, frost control.

We’d work all day, eat dinner late, go to bed for some hard earned rest, then be awakened by the frost alarm around 2 a.m. Out to the orchards we went to protect our crops. And there was no more rest until the next evening. And this could go on for two or three weeks in the spring. Then there was constant monitoring of the crops for weed control, analysis of the health of the plants, watering needs, fertilizer, workers to help, and the list goes on and on.

I put my Christian Science into practice everyday, and saw wonderful results. But eventually, I asked, “Why not forsake tilling the ground for supply entirely and harvest in the fields of Mind where there is no threat of frost, weeds or disease? Wouldn’t life be much easier?”


This was a sobering question to ponder. Was it doable? Was it possible?


The answer was a resounding YES! And I followed through, eventually transitioning off of the farm to practicing deeper reliance on turning to Mind for supply rather than the soil. And I’ve never lost a night of sleep to control frost ever since! My “yoke” got much easier.


And I think this is what Jesus Christ meant...


A yoke was a harness farmers locked on their oxen to control their movements as they plowed their fields. The yokes were unyielding. Oxen in a yoke were governed and directed by the master controlling that yoke.


Jesus “yoke,” or work, was very very light because he did not look to a material source for supply. He went directly to God, the beneficent giver of all good, help and healing.


People’s “yokes” are heavy when they look to a material source for their supply. Why? Because there is nothing reliable about material circumstances and conditions. They are fraught with flaws and uncertainty.


For instance, take the stock market, interest rates, the credit market, diet plans, medical theories, and more,...they all fluctuate and change. You can’t count on them. To trust them and look to them for well being is to place their “yoke” upon your shoulders and be driven by their ups and downs. It’s a heavy and difficult load to bear at times.


Jesus was telling us to quit serving mammon, to stop living for worldly goals and purposes. Cast that yoke of bondage off, and seek our good in God, he taught. Jesus’ yoke was to learn about God, live true to God, and rely upon God. This “yoke” is a very easy one to serve compared to the harness of material desires and wants that bind us to the limited beliefs of matter-earth existence and hold us back from reaching our spiritual potential.


“My burden is light!” Jesus exclaimed.


Wow. Do you get it! When you live to serve Christ, not mammon, life on earth gets much easier. It’s not a toil or drudgery anymore. It gets lighter, happier, and easier. The heaviness of materialism fades away. The pains and fears of sense diminish. Joy comes back into your step and smiles on your face. Life is enjoyable.


The metaphysical demands on the student of Christ grow and increase, but these tasks are a joy to fulfill and follow through with compared to tilling the soil of mortal mind. Growth in spiritual understanding is the most rewarding work one could ever engage. And it pays the bills when done selflessly and for the purpose of loving one’s neighbor as the Bible instructs.


“My burden is light!” I love it. "When working for God, my workload is light," I use as a paraphrase.


Serving God is a joy. Serving mammon is a burden. Choose the easier way and lighten your load today.

What label are you wearing?

A woman walked by the front of my office yesterday wearing a t-shirt that read, “Just plain grumpy.” I took the message to mean she was generally a very grumpy person, and people had better keep their distance lest they get a dose of her unpleasantness.

I was partially amazed that she wanted to broadcast such a negative attitude about herself to the whole world.

“Here comes Miss Grumpy. You’d better watch out!” she seemed to be saying.

Then I chuckled because I realized labels can be worn in many different ways. Some prefer to print a statement on their clothes, but others wear messages on their face, in the way they sit, how they treat others, and in the words they choose to speak.

Labels are indicators of thinking going on behind the scenes, and those activities behind the scenes do not require a t-shirt logo to be seen. They surface whether we try or not. The human body is the human thought in action governing that body.

So, what labels was I wearing? I asked.

Was I projecting a picture of pleasantness, joy, cheer, gratitude, and love?

Was I feeling these qualities within so they would appear without?

Was there any grumpiness or complaint that needed to be eliminated from thought so it didn’t appear in my word or action toward others?

There is always congruency in our lives. What we project is congruent with what we believe to be true in the moment we’re in.

Even in the times when we don’t agree with what we project, there is congruency. The outer projects the inner. If things are not right outwardly, that’s a sign that the inner needs to be corrected with spiritual truth. As the inner is reformed, the outer improves.

And the spiritual truth includes the fact that each of us has a wonderful individuality made in the likeness of Love where there is only room for joy, cheer, gratitude, compassion, love, thoughtfulness and care. These qualities, lived and expressed, label us a child of God, and that’s a “t-shirt” message any of us should be happy to put on.

What label are you wearing today?

Life of drudgery or joy

"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."

~ Albert Einstein

I believe there is ultimately one way to live our lives, and that is for God. But in the temporal human experience, many people often miss the joys of spiritual life along the way, and life becomes lackluster, dull and boring. This ought not to be.

Life, lived well, is a tremendously rich and full experience overflowing with awe-inspiring opportunity and possibility for increased improvement and spiritual growth.

To live the spiritual life God has given us to reflect, is to keep one’s eyes and ears wide open to the goodness of God happening all around. It’s a matter of perspective.

The dull uninspired thought is blind to God’s good at hand. The eager, expectant and grateful heart rapidly discerns the good, seizes upon it and ventures for more. Life becomes a miracle, rather than a holding pattern.

A smile from God

Sent in by a reader...

Sing with your heart

A reader sent in the below email with a message that touched my heart and may touch your’s too.

Evan, your blog, “Fling yourself free,” is delightful and reminds me of a time when the Spirit spoke to me clearly.

I had just made a non-stop 24 hour trip by bus in dead of winter from Cordoba to Mendoza, Argentina, and the bus heater was broken. When I arrived, I was sick with flu-like symptoms. I settled into the pension where I was to live. The mountains of the Andes loomed outside and I was miserable from the coldness of the winter.

In the back patio was a hanging birdcage, and in the bottom of the cage was a motley looking male canary. He hopped around the bottom of the cage covered with newspaper because his feet had frozen off. He seemed as miserable as I was. I could relate to his circumstances.

I had a blanket around my shoulders and was watching the early morning sun finally push up on the horizon.

As the day began, this little fluff of feathers began to warble and trill to greet the morning. I was so surprised at his joy.

I walked over to the cage and looked down at this really unattractive little bird on whom I had just moments before bestowed my pity and upon whom I felt we had a lot in common. With no one else around, I spoke aloud to the bird and asked, “How can you sing without feet?”

An answer came so quickly it caught me by surprise. And the response was, "He doesn’t sing with his feet, he sings with his heart!"

I was silenced and then realized that he was seeing something special and good during that cold winter morning that I was ignoring. Despite the cold and loneliness he still found a reason to be grateful.

I have since then held a special wish to one day own a male canary and see the day through his eyes and find joy in the moment no matter what my circumstances.

Again and again I keep learning the same lesson over and over—I am reminded by the Spirit, “I am not my feet. I am not my symptoms. I am something much more grand, wonderful and real. The joy of my life never dies, it never leaves. It is always here with me. I have only to stop and sense it's presence beyond the range of my five physical senses.”

"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Jesus Christ

Take joy

A poem by Fra Giovanni, (1513)


Take Joy

There is nothing I can give you, which you have not;
But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.

There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look.
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard.
Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me that angel's hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.
Our joys too: be not content with them as joys.
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
And so, at this time, I greet you.
Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Make a joyful noise

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness;
come before his presence with singing.

Know ye that the Lord he is God;
it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,and into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting;
and his truth endureth to all generations.

Psalm 100