Numbers 7:6-10: in context

This is a small logistics note about moving the tabernacle through the wilderness, and it hides a lesson inside an unequal handout. Moses distributes the transport wagons and oxen among the Levite clans according to the work each one does. The sons of Gershon get two wagons and four oxen. The sons of Merari, who haul the heavy frames and boards, get four wagons and eight oxen. And the sons of Kohath get nothing at all.

On its face that looks like a slight. Everyone else received equipment, and Kohath was handed no wagon and no ox. But the reason given turns the whole thing over. Kohath received no wagons, the text says, because the service of the sanctuary belonged to them, and they carried it on their shoulders. Kohath's assignment was the holiest one, to carry the ark, the table, and the lampstand, the objects at the very center of Israel's worship, and those were never to be loaded onto a cart. They had to be carried by hand, on the shoulders, up close, by the men themselves. What looked like being left out of the supplies was actually the mark of the most sacred task. The heaviest honor came with the least equipment and the most personal burden.

It is easy to look at the wagons everyone else was given and feel cheated by a load you have to carry on your own shoulders. But the bare-shouldered burden is sometimes the one nearest to what is holy, the one meant to be carried personally and not handed off to machinery. What weight have I resented carrying by hand, while envying the wagons others were given, that may be the honored assignment and not the overlooked one?