Dallas Willard, well-known author and philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, liked to talk about The Jesus Kind of Life. One aspect of living and loving like Jesus is how unburdensome it is. Compared to what we see all around us, it is uncomplicated. It is free of unnecessary anxiety. This realization makes you want to ask, “So why don’t more people follow in Jesus’ steps?”

Eugene Peterson’s masterful paraphrase of this text in The Message makes these truths leap off of the page. As someone who writes frequently about walking with God and walking the path he lays out for us, I love these simple sentences full of such expressive truth:

Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. 
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. 
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

There is a positive alternative to what we see all around us. It is walking with Jesus, living and loving like him. The “unforced rhythms of grace” are yours for exploring. Learning “to live freely and lightly” is the course Jesus wants you to enroll in, learn by heart, and live out for the rest of your days.

This is a good prayer to pray. This is the life, the way. 

What’s stopping you, and how do you move it out of the way?

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I will ponder and apply the truths of this text today.

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Our Father, yours is the way, the truth, and the life. I want to walk with you and work with you today. I want to see how you changes lives and build a better world. I want to learn and to live the unforced rhythms of grace. I want to keep company with you and learn to live freely and lightly. Amen.