When Life Snarls

I was thinking, as I was praying one morning this week, about tangles. (Sounds like my mind was wandering a bit, doesn’t it!) I’ve had some experience with tangled things, and you have, too. Trying to run a hairbrush through a child’s long hair. Staring helplessly at the hopelessly intertwined strings of two downed kites. Sitting on the riverbank with two fishing poles - and one mass of snarled line...

But I was thinking of other kinds of tangles... the kind you really pray about. The sticky situation confronting your child, the strained relationship between two people you love very much, the decision that needs made when none of the options look promising - those kinds of tangles.

Does your life have any? I think most of ours do. In fact, sometimes the various tangles seem to pile up until we’ve got quite a collection going. And the question is, “What do we do with them?”

When I get to that point, I often do what any child would do... I picture myself picking up all the unsolvable conundrums and carrying them to my Father’s lap (I had a pretty good pile of them this week):

“I can’t fix these. I’m giving them to You. Can You take care of them, please?” He’s never been too busy. Never thought such work was beneath Him. He’s untangled everything I’ve ever brought Him.

Sometimes it takes awhile. In fact, He’s pleased when I go off and trust him to work on those problems, knowing He’ll call me back as He eventually works each one out. Not always the way I thought. Not always the way I’d hoped. But always for good.

We often hear Christians say, “I don’t know what I’d do without Jesus. I don’t know what other people do who don’t have Him.”

I think I can make one pretty good guess... without a Father’s lap nearby and a Father’s experienced hands reaching out, I’d say they spend a lot of time sitting among snarled things, picking helplessly at solutions, or trying to ignore the tangles altogether.

Makes you glad you have a Father, doesn’t it? You might want to recommend Him today to someone who doesn’t.