At some point, if not over your lifetime, but say over the span of a specific time period, you walk through cold, dark valleys. You grope along situational caverns or unpredictable cliffs only to end up on the other side of a jagged boulder of mounted problems left to climb. Halfway through the journey, the stockpile of contingencies weighing heavy on your aching back shifts and slides as you dig deeper for a solution out of yet another mess. And as you face your fears, frustrations, and issues with forgivenesses, you try and reach into your massive, mental knapsack. Inside it exposes a plethora of stored-up Q&A baggies.
One problem: God didn’t pack those baggies. And when you open up one of those go-to contents, the answers are as stale and unhelpful as the knapsack you’re carrying. So what do you do? Toss it? Oh no! You stuff it back in the sack! No sense in throwing away a perfectly good contingency when another mounted problem is always around the proverbial corner, right?
I don’t go camping for this very reason! Okay, that’s not entirely true. Actually, it has everything to do with things that go creeping, crawling and slithering in the woods! But getting back to the point of this story. Contingencies. We spend our lives packing and unpacking possible scenarios which would fit into our situation and possibly free our emotional state with a solution:
- Scenario: I had a doctor’s appointment late in the week. The results won’t be discussed until the doctor returns from vacation. What do I do in interim?
- Scenario: My daughter/son’s behavior has grown increasingly speculative. The more I probe, the more evasive she/he becomes. What do I do in interim?
- Scenario: No matter my attempts to make peace, I butt heads with my co-worker/supervisor/family member/friend/associate and now the problems are escalating. What do I do in interim?
We all have varying scenarios and if I were to look down on your valley, I’d see a flurry of emotions ascending like a thick cloud unable to see any sane solution.
But can I tell you the solution isn’t in our contingencies. The solution always comes in our absolute, unswerving trust in Christ! His Holy Word clears clouds of doubt, frustration, bitterness, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, loneliness, despair and any other contingency left lingering in that emotional knapsack of ours. He tells us, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30). What a beautiful assurance and even more, a beautiful choice! We have the choice to trust God with our scenarios and believe His Word for the only contingency which makes sense.
Yes, we will face some stuff in life, some tough stuff. I could rattle off and compare my list of contingencies with yours, but honestly, what good would that do? Actually, I do know. It would lead us in a deeper valley with a longer list and no way of trusting our Savior to see us through.
My sage advice: relinquish the list of contingencies to God and trust His Word out of your valley.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4
