Little Pebbles

In ongoing attempts to establish more regular exercise in our lives, Ann and I moved into this walking kick at the metro park, and we should get back into it now that the holidays are over and a new year has begun. Talk about walking, I remember reading about a young man named Peter Jenkins who set out with his dog Cooper to walk across America (I was hoping that was not one of Ann's goals for our exercise program). Well, I was intrigued by an observation made by this super-walker. When someone asked him what the greatest obstacle was in his long hike across the country, he gave a pretty surprising answer. He said, "The little pebbles I got in my shoes."

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, 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 identify it. But it's harder to fight the little foxes that just 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 that is on the fritz, the banking problems, the office politics, those little injustices, or the 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 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 God about them. I am 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.

Lacing up in this New Year,

Art