Rocky Road

If you’re breathing you have had a few challenges in your life. It seems to me the little, sometimes daily stresses are like little pebbles beneath our feet. The stresses can be as simple as getting cut off while driving, picking up a bottle and finding the lid isn’t on tight so that what was inside is now outside, forgetting your umbrella during a rain storm, or getting to a store after it’s closed. I’m sure there are many inconveniences you could add to this list, but you get what I’m saying. The bothersome things of life – like bothersome pebbles -- can provide an occasion for stress. I see these as the gravel beneath our feet. Don’t let them trip you up! Walk above them.

Sometimes we encounter rocks, big enough to cause problems but you can see over them. These are situations that you find right smack-dab in the middle of your path. They just show up out of nowhere and you can find yourself stumbling right over them. These rocks might be relationship issues, job tensions, or even stupid things like drinking and driving, smoking, and the like. The goal is to spot them as soon as they plop down and then be able to side step. Unfortunately, I have personally discovered that I’ve had to trip over a few of these rocks and get a bit scraped up before I could learn to recognize these impediments. Learn to recognize these rocks and miss them the next time they find their way in your path.

Then there are boulders. These gargantuan rocks fall with a thundering thud, totally blocking your path. I have found they tend to come in groups, too. They typically occur stacked one on top of another, reaching heights for which a telescope would be needed to see their top. Boulders are things like being laid off-thud, house foreclosures-pound, divorce-crash, bankruptcy-pummel, and major health issues-smash. What do you do? What have you done? I have taken my little hammer and hacked away at a few boulders myself. Have you? Are you now? How do you bulldozed or surmounted these troublesome obstacles?

Life's Tapestry

Viewing our lives as a tapestry, from the front of the tapestry, there is a beautiful picture. It is made up of many different colors of thread to form a lovely scene or picture. But, turn the tapestry over and you cannot tell what the picture on the front looks like. Furthermore, the back view just looks like a mess of knots and threads, seemingly arranged without rhyme or reason. I believe that sometimes we are only looking at our lives from the back. All we see are the knots, the problems, the hanging threads, and the unresolved issues in our lives. But take heart! There is a beautiful picture being created on the front.

If just one of the threads were to be pulled out, the picture would be incomplete. It would not be the picture it was meant to be. So it is with our lives. Each and every experience, every difficulty and lesson works together to weave the picture of our life. We would not be the person we are without every single thread; every unique lesson.

If you choose to view the experiences, the difficulties, the bad days of life as a way of teaching and helping you to grow, you are the better for it. Not only you, but those that you come in contact with are given the opportunity to learn from your life tapestry.

Ask for a blessing!

I don’t remember now how my friend, Helen, and I discovered Psalm 86:17, but what an exciting and essential verse it has become in our lives. It’s a red flag, of sorts, that we throw upwards in difficult situations and say, “I’m in need of a blessing today, Lord!”

Psalm 86:17:
Show me a sign for good, that those who hate me may see it, and be ashamed,
because Thou, O Lord, hast helped me and comforted me.

“Show me a sign for good” – some translations say, “Show me or send me a sign of your favor;” or, “Give me a sign of your goodness.” Literally, this phrase means, “Make with me a token by Thy providential care.”

Over the years, especially during particularly stressful and difficult times, this verse has surfaced time and time again. It speaks to me and floods my being: Show me a token for good; send me a sign of your favor. Make it appear to others, as well as to myself, that God is doing me good and designing further good for me. Let me experience some illustrious instances of God’s favor to me, a token of God’s goodness.

This principle is straight from the Word of God, and it works, if for no other reason than it changes my directional views. Instead of looking at the situation in front of me or getting caught up in the stress swirling around me, I begin to look for signs of how good God is to me – to all of us – daily. Think back over your own life. How have you been blessed? What are you thankful for? If you look for them, these tokens or signs of God’s good are all over the place! I challenge you to open your eyes and your heart and see them.