Last night I discovered that the yarn on one edge of my
throw blanket was knotted together. The individual pieces were tangled instead
of loosely hanging as designed. The other side was completely free from
problems, but this one was a mess. Some strands were easily pulled out, but more
often so many were intertwined that I could only loosen one to get to another.
I spent more than an hour freeing the yarn from interwoven knots.
Isn’t life often the same way? We attempt to deal with a
problem and find that it involves a whole knot of issues. Far too often we implement
easy answers that don’t work because the difficulty is too complex.
A couple of years ago I found myself burned out. As I sought
to uncover the source, I exposed layers of reasons. I had always assumed
burnout was caused by lack of boundaries or absence of quality prayer, but in
my case neither was true. It required work to expose all of the knotty issues
involved.
When disentangling gets me to the core of my problem, I generally
find a spiritual hindrance —for me it's usually lack of faith or selfishness. With my burnout I was putting responsibility on myself that belongs to God.
Instead of trusting him with the outcome of ministry, I put the burden on myself
for results. It’s not fun to discover that the knot begins inside me.
Freedom takes time and prayer. As broken people living in a
broken world, we all have issues that require disentangling. By God’s grace we can have the courage and
the faith to let God point out every strand of our problems so that we can be
free. What problem are you facing that needs unknotting?
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You have such a neat way of taking a common type of occurrence and giving it a meaningful, spiritual application. I know I will never look a tangle in the same way again! That said, I find myself in the process of untangling myself from unfulfilling obligations but with only a vague understanding of the spiritual implications. I appreciate your insightful examination of your own life which sheds light on my own situation and the need for me to examine myself on a deeper level. Thank you for sharing your spiritual journey through your blog. It's always a help.
ReplyDeleteYou are always such a great encourager to me, Irish. I am so glad that you find this helpful. I know that God will give you wisdom as you begin to examine all the threads involved.
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