Trusting God With Our Problems (God’s Large Bag)

I am going to share this story with because I have a feeling many of you are going through very traumatic times in your life. Sometimes it helps to know that almost everybody has traumatic times. I share this story with you because it helped me so very much just last week.

After having a particularly trying summer — with Mama’s stroke and 2 month hospitalization, John’s liver problems (which turned out not to be serious), much business travel, John, Suzanne and the children returning to Africa (after my having them here to enjoy for over 2 months), Joanna and Chase’s baby coming prematurely and being on life support and in the hospital for 10 days, a school of art fashion, a trip to California, and the usual business and family pressures — I woke up one morning and thought I had had about all I could take. At Joe’s advice I went to talk with a wonderful Christian counselor here in Huntsville, Dr. James Smith. He shared something with me that was so meaningful I want to pass it on to you. First, he prayed with me, then I told him some of the things which were going on in my life. Following my recitation of the things weighing so heavily on me, he asked me to shut my eyes and imagine myself in a beautiful garden with one big, beautiful tree. He told me that Jesus was in the garden standing on one side of the tree and I was standing on the other. Jesus, Dr. Smith said, was holding a big bag. I was instructed to go out around the garden and pick up these things which were burdens to me (and which were worrying me so much) and pick them up one by one, then to take them to Jesus and put them into His big bag. I was then encouraged to thank Jesus for loving me enough to be able to carry my burdens for me, because God is surely willing and able to take care of me. I can put my trust in Him to take care of me and my burdens. Ever since Dr. Smith told me about God’s large bag, I take each “worry” which arises and place it in God’s bag and trust Him to handle it. Most of this worry I have should be in the garbage bag anyway, since I know full well that worry is a sin.

Mark 4:37-41 37 - A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But He [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him up and said to Him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid” Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

May God Bless and Keep Each of You,

Martha