The Cross-Eyed Bear: The Yoke We Don’t Carry Alone

A little boy was sitting in church during the song service. The leader asked if anyone had a favorite hymn they’d like to sing.

Up shot his hand.

“Yes, son,” the leader said with a smile, “what would you like us to sing?”

The boy answered with complete confidence:

“Can we sing 'The Cross-Eyed Bear'?”

For a moment, the room went quiet. Then a few people began to chuckle. And then it dawned on everyone what he meant.

Not The Cross-Eyed Bear. “The Cross I’ll Bear.”

It was just a child mishearing the words. But there was something almost sweet about it. Because to a child, words like cross and burden don’t carry the same weight they do for adults. He didn’t hear something heavy or grim. He just heard sounds and made the best sense of them he could.

But as we grow older, those words start to feel heavier.

We talk about:

bearing our cross

carrying our burdens

holding everything together

doing what has to be done

And somewhere along the way, life begins to feel like a long, steady load across our shoulders.

We become the ones who carry.

We carry:

responsibilities

expectations

fears about the future

regrets about the past

And most of the time, we don’t even call it suffering. We just call it life.

Into that kind of life, Jesus speaks these words:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you…”

For many of us, that word yoke doesn’t sound very restful. It sounds like another burden. Another piece of wood across our shoulders.

But what if we’ve misunderstood the yoke?

What if it was never meant to be carried alone?

There’s something quietly revealing about the question people ask when they meet you for the first time. It usually comes after a few polite sentences, maybe a comment about the weather, or where you’re from.

Then, almost inevitably, the question appears: “So… what do you do?”

It sounds harmless. Casual. Ordinary. But most of us know that the question carries more weight than it seems. It is not just about occupation. It is not just about how we spend forty hours a week. It is a question about identity.

What do you do?

What do you produce?

What do you contribute?

What is your role in the machinery of the world?

For many people, especially men, that question has shaped the way we see ourselves for most of our lives. From an early age, we are quietly trained to become engines. We are taught to move things forward, to carry weight, to solve problems, to hold things together. And so we learn to measure ourselves by output. By results. By performance.

If the engine is running, life feels steady.

If the engine sputters, something inside us begins to shake.

But even beyond work, most of life feels like carrying. We carry responsibilities. We carry expectations. We carry bills, deadlines, aging parents, struggling children, difficult conversations, uncertain futures. We carry the quiet fear that if we stop pushing, everything will fall apart.

Most of the time, we don’t even think of it as dramatic. We just call it life.

We get up.

We go to work.

We do what needs to be done.

We carry the load.

If someone were to ask how we’re doing, we’d probably say, “I’m fine.” Because that’s what engines do. They run. They don’t complain. They don’t stop unless something breaks.

There is a certain kind of tiredness that sleep does not fix. It’s the tiredness that comes from being the engine of your own life for too long. The kind of fatigue that settles somewhere deeper than the muscles. A thinning of the spirit. A quiet heaviness that follows you even on your days off.

Into that kind of exhaustion, Jesus speaks some of the most gentle words ever recorded:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

For many of us, though, the word yoke has never sounded very restful. A yoke sounds like a tool. A device. A harness. Something placed across your shoulders. Something that means work.

We hear Jesus’ invitation and, without realizing it, we translate it like this:

“You’re tired? Come take My yoke instead.

It’s a better burden. A holier burden. A spiritual burden.”

The Christian life quietly becomes another version of the same old engine story.

Only now the train has Bible verses painted on the side.

What if we’ve misunderstood the yoke?

What if the yoke was never mainly about the weight?