Who Will Be Handling All Your Problems?

In an advertisement I saw this week, I was taken with this statement on a plaque, “Good morning. This is God…I will be handling all your problems today.  I will not require your help.” Have you ever been doing something you are good at and had a person, who had never done it before, try to help you?  Heard the expression, “too many cooks in the kitchen?”  Of course you have.  It can be very frustrating to be in this situation.  Frustrating for the person who wants to help because you are trying to get them to stop, and frustrating for you because it slows you down, or even worse causes an accident.

I love the comic book series The Adventures of Groo the Wanderer.  Groo is  an incompetent soldier-for-hire.  He wanders from town to town willing to work for the mere cost of some cheese dip.  The way to win a battle is to have Groo on the other side.  If you have Groo in your town; ships are likely to sink in your harbour, natural disasters are likely to strike, and in general you are better off being anywhere else!  This loveable, if dangerous, character, the creation of  Sergio Aragones, is keen and eager to help and loves nothing better than a chance to jump into “A Fray!”

How often do we, like Groo,  turn out to be our own worst enemy?  Eager to be helpful we say yes to too many commitments and, not being able to keep up, end up letting people down?  Feeling down we make ourselves feel better by having an extra-large serving of something chocolate, or salted, and then feel even worse about ourselves when next we step on the scale?  Try the do-it-yourself route for home repairs and end up making the problem worse and more expensive for the professional to fix?  Knowing the right thing to do is not the same as doing it…witness my exercise equipment languishing in varying states of disuse.

God doesn’t really leave us out of the mix of course, that is to say when we insist in trying to be in control he doesn’t stop us.  It is a common question people have.  Doesn’t God have enough power to keep us from doing things we shouldn’t?  The answer is, of course he does, but we were given the “gift” of choice and he is waiting for us to choose and his kingdom over all the other lures dangling before our eyes.

Are you ready to let God handle your problems tomorrow?  I know that I certainly am not doing a good job myself.  Let’s pray that God will give us the strength to admit our weakness tomorrow and rely solely on his handling of our problems.  We will be much better off if, as Marilla Cuthbert was always telling Matthew in Anne of Green Gables,  we can just keep from putting-in-our-oar.