Our Daughter in One Image

This is what our life is like now. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

The Wheelbarrow and the Backpack

My phone rang on a Saturday. I rarely answer the phone. It's not a noble trait, but it's become a bad habit. When I looked at the caller ID, I saw my friend Will's name and sighed. Out of all the people to call me, he's the one person I didn't want to talk to.

Will is another pastor at the church I work at, and his wife was pregnant. Very pregnant. He was scheduled to preach the next morning, and our Senior Pastor was out of town. I knew if he was calling me they were in labor and I was going to have to preach the next morning. I knew the text he was preaching on. It was Matthew 6. You might know it, "do not worry about your life, etc. etc." 

The reason I didn't want to pick up is because I feared having to talk about worry, particularly not worrying, when my life has been consumed with worry lately. I just didn't want to do it. I felt the hypocrisy dripping from me just thinking about it.

It turns out, she wasn't in labor. He preached, and we all were spared. But that night, this metaphor came to me, and I feel like I would have used it if I needed to. Since then, I've been thinking about this more and more.

Jesus tells us not to worry in Matthew 6, and what he's really telling us is our stress and anxiety about the issues in our life are easily handled when they're in his hands. I kept imagining a giant wheelbarrow and a backpack. When we give our anxiety and worry and stress to God, it's like putting it in a wheelbarrow, the wheelbarrow does all the work. When we hang onto it, we're putting it on our back. We carry all the weight. We're essentially saying, "I got this, it's mine."

So whenever I've been worried or anxious or scared lately, I always remind myself it's because I'm putting those cares on my back instead of giving them away to a God who really can do all the work. And somehow, that's been really comforting.