I’m gonna guess that most camps have had their fair share of experience with crutches. As I tell campers on the first day, “Camp is lumpy… and bumpy… and it tries to trip you.”

Take a bunch of campers (and staff) add a week’s worth of walking, running, and game playing and you have yourselves a recipe made for crutches. We do our best to minimize the risk, but accidents do happen and thankfully crutches are available when injury leaves people less than able to walk on their own.

Crutches get old real quick when it hurts your hands, hurts your arms, takes FOREVER to get anywhere, and you can’t carry anything because you’re too busy trying to carry yourself. Many people express relief when they’re finally freed of the crutches and can walk on their own, even if it is a little painful at first.

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So it would be quite silly if, one day, you looked in the corner of your room or closet (because, come on now, where else DO you put crutches after you’re healed and don’t need them anymore) and saw your old crutches and thought, “Hey, you know what?! I think I will go back to using those to get around again.”

It would be silly because we know hobbling around on crutches is nothing compared to running free.

But we do that in life and we don’t even realize it. We turn back to “crutches” when we’ve been healed and set free to run.

Colossians 1:20 tells us that through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross we are reconciled with God and have peace. See, because before Christ we were bearing weight that was too heavy to carry on our own. We were bearing the weight of sin and death. The serpent tempted Eve saying that she would not surely die if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and she listened… she didn’t immediately die in the clinical sense… but death bore immediate consequence… and with the weight of that burden we’ve been hobbling ever since.

Beyond our ability to repair, no human effort could fix this wound. Burdens too big for us to bear, they are to us, a wound we cannot heal. Our sin… our brokenness leaves us weary.

But God could; Christ did.

Through Him we are born again, made clean, set free, presented faultless. Our wounds have been healed; we’ve been released from the bonds of sin and death.

Even though we’ve been set free, sometimes we look back into the corner of our room and we see those crutches and think about picking them up and trying them again. The crutches of trying to be good enough, trying to do life on our own, and thinking if we just do our best we can make ourselves right with God. But we can’t because the weight is too much to bear. We were never meant to be hobbling around bearing the weight upon ourselves when Christ took our sin upon himself and bore the penalty of our sin and set us free.

When we don’t allow the redeeming work of Christ to bring peace we are hobbling around on crutches when we could be running!

If this rings true, I’m so there with you! Christ has forgiven me. I’ve been redeemed. But instead, I fall into patterns holding onto a view of me that only sees my sins, can’t see past my stains, and defines me there. I am so used to using my crutches that I forget I can run!

I was watching a movie when these words spoke to the deepest parts of my heart, “Y’all spend so much time beating yourselves up – must be exhausting.”

Kinda gives a new perspective on Jesus’ words when he said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

When you are crushed by the weight of the burden of sin or feelings of unworthiness… put down the crutches of self-reliance and remember Christ who bears our burdens and beckons us to come to Him… to rest in Him!

~Jillene