Perhaps, you too, have experienced a moment in your life where your best effort was made to haul something heavy upward or possibly connect two items together with the use of a rope, but despite your best effort, friction became your enemy and you were left with an unsuccessful attempt, along with a Frayed Rope. Roughly about the same time that I was reading John Eldredge’s Walking with God, I was also deeply absorbed in binge-watching a reality series about surviving in the bush of Alaska. When I read a quote, “I’m frayed like an old rope because of the way I live my life,” I replayed in my mind a scene from an episode in the series where Jessie Holmes is constructing a cabin and has to navigate hoisting a large beam to the peak of the roof by himself. Grateful to editors that bleep the frustrated comments over this arduous task and eliminate footage to speed up the process, the viewer is fully aware of how easily this process could turn sour.

After creatively designing a solution to use tools available at the time, Jessie manages to raise the beam up the wall of the cabin and partially up the roof until the friction created with the edge of the roofline results in a Frayed Rope. I’m confident you can visualize the outcome that the massive beam, although not falling completely to the ground, dropped far enough that a great deal of labor was wasted along with a few choice words pouring out of Jessie’s mouth. Now, one of the many reasons this task was so difficult was due to the fact that he was the only human involved in this construction process, other than the camera operator who remained to the side filming. There was no one to advise him that on the other side of the cabin, which was outside of his vision, he was now working with a Frayed Rope.

Sharing this scene from the series is to illustrate what arises in my mind when asked to consider what happens when we allow the crazy business of this world to stretch us to our limits. Eldredge confesses, “This pushing is such a way of life for me, I barely know how to live otherwise. I’m always working on something. Trying to make things better for me or for someone else…I cannot live my life like this-always working on something…I’m frayed like an old rope because of the way I live my life…I’m pretty sure there isn’t a verse that goes, ‘He leadeth me to utter exhaustion; he runneth me ragged.’ In fact, doesn’t Jesus say something about his yoke is easy and his burden light?”

Charles Stanley helps us understand the reference to a yoke made in Matthew’s gospel, ”In Jesus’ day, people were very familiar with a yoke. It was a heavy bar placed over the neck of two animals to enable them to pull a wagon or plow. Two oxen together under a yoke could pull a greater weight with less effort and work longer than a single animal because the weight of the burden was shared.” Picturing in my mind the two oxen being connected to the yoke with a rope of some type, I visualize how important it is, both with the oxen and when I allow myself to be yoked with Jesus, that no one is working with a Frayed Rope.

The sad reality is that often, even when I am yoked with Jesus and permitting Him to help carry the weight, I allow my end of the rope to become frayed. As a result, I stumble and lose forward momentum, the same as the beam on Jessie’s cabin. Thankfully, for me, Jesus takes the weight, hoisting the burden for me, while granting me the time to recover. But imagine how different the journey to a flourishing life could be if I was intentional about Taking It Slow, never letting myself reach the point of holding a Frayed Rope?

All of us have different stretching points in this busy world before we reach the position of holding a Frayed Rope. What are some strategies you find effective to not allowing yourself to reach this point? Please feel free to share in the comments below.

References:

Eldredge, J. (2008).  Walking with God: Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really. Thomas Nelson.

Stanley, C. (2020, June 27). “Yoked with Jesus.” [Video]. In Touch Ministries. Retrieved from https://www.intouch.org/watch/yoked-with-jesus