Did you ever hear the story of St. Christopher, my children? The story is not true, but it teaches a beautiful lesson. Here it is.
Christopher was a very strong man, whose business it was to take people across a very swift river. One night, in the midst of a terrible storm, a little child came to his door.
“Please carry me over to the other side,” begged the child.
“Impossible,” said Christopher. “See how dark the night is, and how wild the storm, and how angry the current.”
But the child begged and begged, until at last Christopher told him to get up on his back, and he would see what could be done. Bravely he stepped off into the raging river, with the little boy on his back. But as he went on, the little boy began to grow heavier. Light as a feather at first, before Christopher had reached the middle of the stream the burden on his back was as of a full-grown man, and before he had gone three-fourths of the way the burden became more than the weight of the heaviest man in the world, so that Christopher, great giant as he was, could not stand up under it.
Then Christopher knew that it was neither boy nor man he was carrying, but the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Save me, Master,” he cried, “for I am sinking!”
So the Lord Jesus picked up the giant who had been carrying him, and bore him safely back to his hut; and so the kind ferryman became St. Christopher, for the word “Christopher” means, you know, “Christ-bearer.”
This story is not true, I said, but it teaches a true lesson, which is this: Jesus does place burdens upon his children. Often he makes them light at first, but they grow heavier and heavier and heavier. Often we do not know that Jesus is in the burden we are carrying, and often we feel like giving up. But Jesus is there, and if we will only ask him, he will pick up both us and our burden, and carry us to a place of safety and happiness.