When it All Gets Too Much

George was telling me about gardening with his grandson.  At seven years old, Toby had brought his own small wheelbarrow, and had been charged with carrying some of the rubbish round to the compost heap.  “It was a bit of a nightmare,” said George, “He would take the corners too tight, and half of the stuff got shot all over the roses.  To tell you the truth, I was glad when his mother collected him and I could get the place cleared up again.”

The enthusiasm of youth wasn’t quite the answer to George’s needs, it seems.  But let’s just focus for a few minutes on the lost cargo: instead of reaching the compost heap, it didn’t make it round the bend, and landed on the rose-bed.  Isn’t life a bit like that for us sometimes?  Do you feel, like me, that the world has made a tight turn and is off in a different direction, shooting you off at the corner, unable to keep up.  Maybe the task of learning about the latest gadget is more than we can cope with, or perhaps we simply hanker for what seems to have been a slower and perhaps more straightforward lifestyle - as little as twenty or thirty years ago.

I think the psalmist sometimes felt that the world had gone off on its own path, leaving the Lord’s ways behind.  “Why do you stand far off?” he asks the Lord (Ps 10:1), “Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”  After a tirade against the wickedness he sees all around him, he listens to the Lord, and realises that He does see what is going on, hears the prayers of His faithful ones, and will act so that they are no longer troubled by the world.

A number of characters in the Bible felt they weren’t up to what God asked them to do in the world.  Look at Moses (Exodus 4:1,13), Isaiah (Isa.6:5) and Daniel (Dan.10:16-17) as examples, and see how God dealt with their uncertainties.  It wouldn’t be surprising if, after Jesus’ death, the disciples were fearful that they wouldn’t be able to cope with life without Him.  But he had told them that he would send a Counsellor (Jn.14:16-26), and it is that same Holy Spirit that lives within each one of us today.  

So the next time life lurches, and you feel that you’ve been ‘thrown off the barrow’, remember the promises of Jesus, and his often-quoted words at the end of St Matthew’s gospel, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:20).