August 11, 2023
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In ongoing attempts to establish more regular exercise in our lives, my wife and I had moved into this walking kick. And, you know, that was a good idea. Actually, my wife took the research approach, including reading books on walking, which I wasn't sure was necessary since I've been walking since I was about a year old. One of those books was by a man who literally walked across America. I was hoping that was not one of my wife's goals for our exercise program. I was intrigued, though, by an observation made by this super-walker. When someone asked him what the greatest obstacle was in his long hike across the country, (You want to guess?) he gave a pretty surprising answer. He said, "The little pebbles I got in my shoes."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "God of the Little Problems."
It's interesting that the Bible actually describes our life-journey with Jesus as a walk. And some of us share with that man who hiked America the same obstacle in getting to our destination.
In Song of Solomon 2:15, our word for today from the Word of God, we find an intriguing insight about our life journey. It says, "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom." It's the little foxes that ruin things; that spoil what could have been a good result. If it's a big fox, it's easy to shoot it. But it's harder to fight the little foxes that just kind of nibble away. Sounds like an animal kingdom equivalent of a hiker's "little pebbles in your shoes."
And we all experience the aggravation of those little pebbles; the car trouble, the sick child, an inconvenient illness, the appliance on the blink, the banking problems, the office politics, those little injustices, or that unexpected expense. The peace of God is one of a child of God's greatest gifts, but often these little stresses do more to rob us of that peace than even the big crises.
When a major crisis comes, we tend to run to God for His grace. We know we can't fight a giant by ourselves. But when we run into those little mini-headaches of everyday life, we often try to handle those on our own. We fight the big foxes with spiritual weapons and the little foxes with human weapons.
So we lose, not to huge temptations or overwhelming problems, but to flat tires and the flu, to bills and bad traffic. Not because they're so big, but because we don't think to go to Jesus about them. I'm so glad that Jesus is a sparrow-counting, hair-counting, daily bread kind of Savior, aren't you? But I need to go to Him with the small frustrations! We could live much more victoriously if we would immediately go to Jesus for the grace He's promised us in the mini-messes - not just the big ones.
Why let those "little foxes" create a negative, angry, stressed-out you? Turn them over to your Lord who told us He cares about those things. In 1 Peter 5:7 it says, "Casting all your care on Him because He cares for you." You'll walk much longer; you'll walk much lighter if your God is the God of the little pebbles - not just the big boulders.