Recently my wife and I were taking a walk, talking about a number of different hard situations we're aware of. Sometimes this kind of news comes in waves - when we are made aware of people going through hard times - illnesses, marital difficulties, family problems, financial problems - the normal categories. Sometimes in ministry life you can hear about so many things like this that the weight of the news can feel like a million pounds on your shoulders.
During our walk, we were reminding one another that these burdens are not supposed to be upon our shoulders, but rather they are appropriately placed in God's hands - since He's the lord of every life and every circumstance. What we can do when people experience hardship is care for them, love them, encourage them - but to take the burden on our own shoulders has two negative effects: it creates too deep a worry, and this level of engagement actually has a way of impeding our ability to care and love well. There are so many difficulties in life that we cannot solve, as much as we wish we could. What we're learning is that when we accept that we cannot solve them, and we let God be the Lord of them, then we can care for people with love in a way that removes a sense of pressure that we have to solve something. Or someone. That sense of having to solve is not often helpful when trying to give care. These things are hard, and so we reminded each other that God is the Lord of them - he knows, he cares, he's in control.
When we got home from the walk, I saw an advertisement for "apps" for an iPhone. You know - "if you want to find restaurants, there's an app for that. If you want to count calories, there's an app for that." Well, that phrase reminded me that for the various hardships of life - the places we feel frustrated, unable to fix - "there's Lord for that." Embracing God as the Lord this way, enables us to care but not control, to be freed up to move forward while reducing the sense that it's all on us. I think we know there's a balance to all this - we're not dismissive and flippant - but we are placing matters appropriately with God. So someone makes a decision at work that you don't like - "there's a Lord for that." Someone has a child who runs into real difficulty - "there's a Lord for that." You hear of a marriage that's struggling - "there's a Lord for that." This frees us from a mindset of "cure" or "control" and leads us to "care." It's been helpful for us.
