a burden
what’s the point of community if we can’t share each other’s burdens?
1 Thessalonians 2:9
You remember, siblings, our toil and travail, working night and day so we wouldn’t be a burden on any of you while we proclaimed God’s good news to you.
Like many marginalized people, I have a love/hate relationship with Paul.
Sometimes his writing resonates deeply; just as often, it reawakens trauma or is haunted by readers who’ve evoked Paul to justify harm.
Isolated from its context, this verse can uphold a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” individualism, condemning anyone who can’t or won’t live by it — and, ultimately, chews up and spits out even the hardiest of us.
…And yet, something in me feels tender for Paul here.
I read his account not of simply chipping in where he can, but putting himself through toil and travail — anything to avoid being a burden!…and I hear my own internalized ableism.
The status quo teaches us that “burden” is one of the worst things we can be (we should contemplate who is likely to be labeled such).
But what’s the point of community if we can’t share each other’s burdens?
Reflect on a time you struggled alone. What held you back from reaching out? What would it take to accept that you, like all of us, are allowed to be a burden sometimes? That you are worth the time and energy others share with you?