A Divine Connection

When Ken and I retired in the spring of 1997, we didn’t know what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go. To give ourselves time, we sold our house and rented an apartment in Fargo. During our time of transition, we decided to visit a different church each week.

Worshipping with other Christian groups was a good experience. Nearly twelve years later, I can still identify two services that touched me deeply—and the two congregations are at opposite ends of the Christian spectrum.

One was Catholic. I’m sure the memory of that church is vivid in part because the priest bringing the message had been a student of Ken’s—something we didn’t anticipate. The sermon was about blind Bartimaeus.

The other was Baptist, and to make sense of what follows, I’ll provide background. As a child I’d learned I should help others—and there were times when I resented it. I know my parents didn’t understand the pressure I felt. Just the same, I was repeatedly overwhelmed by the weight of other people’s problems.

On July 20, 1997, the pastor of Community Baptist preached on burdens. While the message I received isn’t exactly the message he preached, he taught Scripture so it spoke to me. I’ve never forgotten his teaching.

After a few months we left the apartment to move into the house we built on a lake in Minnesota. Eventually, however, we moved back to the Fargo area, this time to stay, and I began attending a writer’s group.

One of the group’s members was Karen Lindholm, a gal out of the Swedish Baptist tradition. During the course of our conversation, I learned she was a widow and that her husband had been a pastor. Because I’m always interested in spiritual history I asked a few questions and quickly realized her late husband had pastored the Community Baptist Church. Then I asked for dates and determined he was the man of the significant sermon.

In the secular group, I didn’t want to get too excited. I mentioned it quietly and thought she understood. Since then I’ve learned to appreciate Karen greatly—we’ve met together about once a month for several years now—but she didn’t bring the subject up again.

This week, when reorganizing my new office area, I decided to sort through a stack of papers—and found a printed outline of the sermon from July 20, 1997.

I had to share the discovery with Karen, so I sent an email. It turns out she’d forgotten I’d even mentioned our Sunday morning visit to their church—or perhaps she hadn’t heard my reference because multiple people were talking at the same time the night of our writer’s group meeting. Her response indicated she was blessed to hear about a time when God had used her husband. I was blessed by being able to tell her. It somehow seems like a divine connection.


Can I share more about the message?

Pastor Ray—as Karen’s husband was called—used Greek to explain that in the culture of Jesus’ time there were burdens carried by pack animals (he mentioned donkeys), burdens carried by people (he mentioned backpackers as a contemporary example of people carrying loads), and super-large burdens carried in the holds of ships.

Paul wrote, Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:2 NIV) The word translated “burden” means something carried by a pack animal, a burden too big to carry alone. That’s why Christians should help each other.

A few verses later Paul wrote, For each one should carry his own load. (Gal. 6:5 NIV) In the King James Version, this word is also translated burden. In the New International Version it’s translated load. This identifies a smaller burden, something a person can carry by themselves. In God’s economy, it means drawing from God’s grace on their own.

I don’t remember what he said about burdens carried in ships. (According to the outline, the reference was Psalm 38:4) But understanding the difference between two types of burdens made it clear I wasn’t responsible to carry the burdens of everyone I met. Moreover, in the months that followed I understood I wasn’t even responsible for everyone I knew that needed help—God could arrange circumstances if He wanted me involved.

Receiving understanding didn’t transform me overnight. Some revelations have to be worked in gradually. But the sermon that morning provided a foundation for another new beginning, and I’m grateful.