What Do We Do When the Weight Only Gets Heavier?
Reflections from NGC 2071 on carrying burdens, receiving light, and being sustained by God.
There are seasons when life feels heavy, and then, somehow, something even heavier arrives. I’ve been in one of those seasons lately. The kind where you think you’ve reached your limit, only to realize the load can still grow. It’s strange how heaviness compounds like that. One burden settles in, and before you’ve found your footing, another one presses down.
A few nights ago, I pointed my telescope toward NGC 2071, a small reflection nebula tucked inside Orion. It’s not the loudest object in the sky. It doesn’t blaze like the Orion Nebula or stretch across the heavens like the Horsehead. It’s quiet, almost hidden, a pocket of dust and gas illuminated only because a nearby star lends it light.
And as I processed the image, something in me softened.
NGC 2071 is a reminder that even the heaviest regions of space, dense clouds, thick dust, places where light struggles to break through, can still reflect glory when a source of light is near. The nebula doesn’t shine on its own. It simply receives. It simply reflects.
Lately, I’ve felt more like the dust than the star. More like the heaviness than the light. But Scripture has a way of speaking into those places with a clarity I can’t muster on my own.
“Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.” Psalm 55:22
Not lighten you. Not fix everything immediately. Not remove every weight.
He will sustain you.
There’s something honest in that word. It acknowledges the weight. It acknowledges the reality that life can stack burdens on us faster than we can process them. But it also promises that God doesn’t step back when the load grows. He steps closer.
When one heavy thing becomes two, and two become three, He doesn’t ask me to shine. He asks me to stay near enough to His light that even my dust can reflect something of Him.
NGC 2071 is a nebula shaped by turbulence, stellar winds, collisions, pressure, chaos. And yet, in the middle of all that, it glows. Not because it’s strong, but because it’s held within the reach of a greater light.
That’s where I am right now. Maybe that’s where you are too.
If the weight feels like it’s stacking higher than you can carry, you’re not failing. You’re not weak. You’re not alone. You’re simply standing in a dense part of your story, a place where God’s sustaining presence becomes not just comforting, but essential.
Tonight, when you look at the image of NGC 2071, let it remind you of this:
Even in the heaviest places, you are still within reach of His light.
And that light is enough to sustain you until the weight shifts, until the storm settles, until the dust begins to glow again.
Until next time, keep looking up.
-g
Greg- I'm praying for you....