Daily Devotional for Small Group Discussion: Light as a Feather

by Mary Luti | published on Mar 10, 2025

Discussion Questions 

  1. Read Matthew 11:28-30. Then read the devotional below, “Light as a Feather.”  
  1. When has a difficult task felt easy because of love? 
  1. When have you been surprised and humbled by another person lovingly helping you with (or supporting you through) something burdensome? 
  1. How might the light load of Jesus’s “love yoke” (as the writer says) help you engage the challenging times in the world around you? 

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:30 (NRSV) 

An older church member succumbed to a lingering illness. He’d been much loved, but that love was hard-won. Whenever his shame, regret, and bitter memories kicked up inside him, he’d take it out on people in the church. It took perseverance to love him, to find the places in him that were beautiful. With God’s help, some of us eventually did.  

His funeral was on a holiday weekend. Many folks had gone away, and the reception fell to one woman, someone he’d often offended. She made sandwiches, set up chairs, laid the table, served the coffee, and stayed late to put things away. I caught her at the door. “That was so much work! Thank you.” 

“A pleasure,” she replied.  

A pleasure? I looked at her, wide-eyed. She could read between my lines: A pleasure? For him?  

“Oh, yes,” she assured me. “Light as a feather!” And out she went, looking younger than she was. 

And I thought about times of my own when, because of love, some hard thing I was doing seemed the best, most compelling thing in the world. Times when I felt almost weightless. Times when the hours sped by as fast as they did for Jacob, who served Laban seven years to wed Rachel, “and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.”  

Love, Paul says, bears all things. Love shoulders it all, bending under it to unburden us. Light as a feather. There are many ways to live in this world, but to live the best way, go to Jesus, take his love yoke upon you, learn how light it is. 

Prayer
Place your yoke upon us, O Christ, that we may know the weightless joy of love.

Mary Luti About the Author
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.