yoke

144:8.8“It would ap­pear that the Fa­ther in heaven has hid­den some of these truths from the wise and haughty, while he has re­vealed them to babes. But the Fa­ther does all things well; the Fa­ther re­veals him­self to the uni­verse by the meth­ods of his own choos­ing. Come, there­fore, all you who la­bor and are heavy laden, and you shall find rest for your souls. Take upon you the di­vine yoke, and you will ex­pe­ri­ence the peace of God, which passes all un­der­stand­ing.”

124:1.7Je­sus’ sec­ond sis­ter, Martha, was born Thurs­day night, Septem­ber 13. Three weeks af­ter the com­ing of Martha, Joseph, who was home for awhile, started the build­ing of an ad­di­tion to their house, a com­bined work­shop and bed­room. A small work­bench was built for Je­sus, and for the first time he pos­sessed tools of his own. At odd times for many years he worked at this bench and be­came highly ex­pert in the mak­ing of yokes.

126:1.1This is the cal­en­dar year of his four­teenth birth­day. He had be­come a good yoke maker and worked well with both can­vas and leather. He was also rapidly de­vel­op­ing into an ex­pert car­pen­ter and cab­i­net­maker. This sum­mer he made fre­quent trips to the top of the hill to the north­west of Naz­a­reth for prayer and med­i­ta­tion. He was grad­u­ally be­com­ing more self-con­scious of the na­ture of his be­stowal on earth.

163:6.7“You have en­tered upon this great work of teach­ing mor­tal man that he is a son of God. I have shown you the way; go forth to do your duty and be not weary in well do­ing. To you and to all who shall fol­low in your steps down through the ages, let me say: I al­ways stand near, and my in­vi­ta­tion-call is, and ever shall be, Come to me all you who la­bor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am true and loyal, and you shall find spir­i­tual rest for your souls.”

141:3.7The Mas­ter never said, “Come to me all you who are in­do­lent and all who are dream­ers.” But he did many times say, “Come to me all you who la­bor, and I will give you rest—spir­i­tual strength.” The Mas­ter’s yoke is, in­deed, easy, but even so, he never im­poses it; ev­ery in­di­vid­ual must take this yoke of his own free will.

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.