Jeremiah 28:10-11 – I Am Not My Yoke.
10 Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck and broke it. 11 And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Even so I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years.’ ” And the prophet Jeremiah went his way. Jeremiah 28:10-11, New King James Version
Rebekah Taussig in the August 28, 2020 issue of TIME magazine here https://time.com/5881597/disability-kindness/ is incensed. She has been navigating paralysis since she was a toddler. She can manage the medical implications, but chafes at what people make of them.
"Like the folks who try to do me a favor by keeping me separate from this disabled body of mine: All I see when I look at you is a beautiful woman. I don’t even notice your wheelchair! It’s meant as a kindness, but it feels like erasure."
She integrates disability as part of who she is rather than something to be magnanimously and ostentatiously ignored in statements like that one, or as other people's signal for her perpetual rescue. She charges, "This is the power of the one-dimensional, deeply embedded ableist script in our culture. Some bodies are Victims, others are Heroes."
I find that the reaction in Jeremiah 28:10-11 bubbles up from a different place. It beckons to a wider view. Jeremiah, having been told to fashion a yoke and to wear it before his people, could have imbued it with his identity as well as his craftsmanship. He could become Jeremiah the Yoked instead of Jeremiah the prophet of God called to display His glory in different ways in different situations.
If he had, his reaction to the refutation in these verses would have been antithetical to the one we see. Another prophet, Hananiah, breaks his yoke, contradicting part of his message. Rather than seeing the Gospel in the limitation Jeremiah labors under, Hananiah reacts by striking the prophet's burden that is immediately within reach.
Had Hananiah been around to watch Ms. Taussig assemble her wheelchair and transfer to it from her car in a time-refined process she has reduced to 30 seconds, he would have insisted on helping. Taussig feels part of her is being negated when this happens. She feels imposed upon by would-be heroes.
Jeremiah, however, goes his way in scriptural simplicity. He wore the yoke in matter-of-fact obedience motivated by faith. Yet that faith identity in God's eyes continues, yoke or no yoke. Relieved of it, Jeremiah still is who he is in God's eyes. His way is God's way, yoke or no yoke. Bearing a burden obediently is but one chapter in his God story showing one aspect of God's character.
Ms. Taussig even bristles in the course of her story at someone praying for her healing. The body she inhabits, and the roles and reactions it necessitates, have imprinted themselves on her soul. They have, at least insofar as one can determine from one article of eloquent indignation, obscured her view of God-ordained possibilities beyond what she has known heretofore. Faith is an affront to who she currently is rather than a tailwind toward what she might next experience.
As a Christian with cerebral palsy, I would like to be entirely otherwise. I would like to reach Paul's point of persistently asking God and the people God might use for relief. Provide amelioration In whole or in part, my identity is intact and even enhanced by the un-calculating confession of my limitations. I would be convinced down to my bones that character-shaping blessings and challenges beckon apart from the diagnosis I now know.
Like Taussig, though, I get used to the status quo, although my Bible offers to open my eyes. My reaction wasn't all that different from hers when, after a show, a Christian artist came out into the crowd and offered to pray for me. I bristled, more consumed by pride's hold resisting the idea of being made an object lesson than considering this man's out-reaching love.
Submitting despite the battle within, by the grace of God I allowed this love to cover anything errant in his motivations. He prayed for healing, but he also gave me his cell phone number, and we have conversed many times since. We are two sons of Adam, two brothers in Christ.
We deal with different bodies and different experiences. Yet, we rely on the same Christ-conveyed power. He isn't entirely defined by his vocation as Singer any more than I am defined by cerebral palsy, especially as his opportunities to perform in public were curtailed as the pandemic unfolded. We are, day by day, realizing the same deep sense of identity in Him.
Yokes remind us. The breaking, negating, ignoring of our yokes also remind us who we are in Him. They remind us that CHRIST'S yoke is easy and His burden is light. This is because OUR yoke, however onerous it might seem to the world, is solely for training purposes. Christ has paid for our sins. It is finished. In the Heavenlies, we are seen as complete in Him, even while the earthbound measure limbs, or IQs, and their functions to determine where we fit on the scale between the Heroic and those in need of rescue.
Others may take the time to hear and identify with the story behind our struggle, or they may be completely consumed with playing the hero in their own story. Which they do, and whether the seed of faith we plant grows, though, is up to Christ the ultimate Hero. My lasting diagnosis is not CP but obsession with Him and His purposes.
Rebekah Taussig in the August 28, 2020 issue of TIME magazine here https://time.com/5881597/disability-kindness/ is incensed. She has been navigating paralysis since she was a toddler. She can manage the medical implications, but chafes at what people make of them.
"Like the folks who try to do me a favor by keeping me separate from this disabled body of mine: All I see when I look at you is a beautiful woman. I don’t even notice your wheelchair! It’s meant as a kindness, but it feels like erasure."
She integrates disability as part of who she is rather than something to be magnanimously and ostentatiously ignored in statements like that one, or as other people's signal for her perpetual rescue. She charges, "This is the power of the one-dimensional, deeply embedded ableist script in our culture. Some bodies are Victims, others are Heroes."
I find that the reaction in Jeremiah 28:10-11 bubbles up from a different place. It beckons to a wider view. Jeremiah, having been told to fashion a yoke and to wear it before his people, could have imbued it with his identity as well as his craftsmanship. He could become Jeremiah the Yoked instead of Jeremiah the prophet of God called to display His glory in different ways in different situations.
If he had, his reaction to the refutation in these verses would have been antithetical to the one we see. Another prophet, Hananiah, breaks his yoke, contradicting part of his message. Rather than seeing the Gospel in the limitation Jeremiah labors under, Hananiah reacts by striking the prophet's burden that is immediately within reach.
Had Hananiah been around to watch Ms. Taussig assemble her wheelchair and transfer to it from her car in a time-refined process she has reduced to 30 seconds, he would have insisted on helping. Taussig feels part of her is being negated when this happens. She feels imposed upon by would-be heroes.
Jeremiah, however, goes his way in scriptural simplicity. He wore the yoke in matter-of-fact obedience motivated by faith. Yet that faith identity in God's eyes continues, yoke or no yoke. Relieved of it, Jeremiah still is who he is in God's eyes. His way is God's way, yoke or no yoke. Bearing a burden obediently is but one chapter in his God story showing one aspect of God's character.
Ms. Taussig even bristles in the course of her story at someone praying for her healing. The body she inhabits, and the roles and reactions it necessitates, have imprinted themselves on her soul. They have, at least insofar as one can determine from one article of eloquent indignation, obscured her view of God-ordained possibilities beyond what she has known heretofore. Faith is an affront to who she currently is rather than a tailwind toward what she might next experience.
As a Christian with cerebral palsy, I would like to be entirely otherwise. I would like to reach Paul's point of persistently asking God and the people God might use for relief. Provide amelioration In whole or in part, my identity is intact and even enhanced by the un-calculating confession of my limitations. I would be convinced down to my bones that character-shaping blessings and challenges beckon apart from the diagnosis I now know.
Like Taussig, though, I get used to the status quo, although my Bible offers to open my eyes. My reaction wasn't all that different from hers when, after a show, a Christian artist came out into the crowd and offered to pray for me. I bristled, more consumed by pride's hold resisting the idea of being made an object lesson than considering this man's out-reaching love.
Submitting despite the battle within, by the grace of God I allowed this love to cover anything errant in his motivations. He prayed for healing, but he also gave me his cell phone number, and we have conversed many times since. We are two sons of Adam, two brothers in Christ.
We deal with different bodies and different experiences. Yet, we rely on the same Christ-conveyed power. He isn't entirely defined by his vocation as Singer any more than I am defined by cerebral palsy, especially as his opportunities to perform in public were curtailed as the pandemic unfolded. We are, day by day, realizing the same deep sense of identity in Him.
Yokes remind us. The breaking, negating, ignoring of our yokes also remind us who we are in Him. They remind us that CHRIST'S yoke is easy and His burden is light. This is because OUR yoke, however onerous it might seem to the world, is solely for training purposes. Christ has paid for our sins. It is finished. In the Heavenlies, we are seen as complete in Him, even while the earthbound measure limbs, or IQs, and their functions to determine where we fit on the scale between the Heroic and those in need of rescue.
Others may take the time to hear and identify with the story behind our struggle, or they may be completely consumed with playing the hero in their own story. Which they do, and whether the seed of faith we plant grows, though, is up to Christ the ultimate Hero. My lasting diagnosis is not CP but obsession with Him and His purposes.
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