“For
this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you
will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put
on. Is not life more than food, and the
body more than clothing? Look at the
birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not worth much more than
they?” Matthew 6:25-26
Raiders
of the Lost Ark. At this moment, you
are no doubt hearing John Miller’s composition of the classic, upbeat theme
song. Think about that opening
scene. Scholar and adventurer, Henry “Indiana”
Jones, inside a deep cave within the jungle.
Preparing to remove a precious artifact, he evaluates the situation and
prepares a counterweight to replace the artifact. The thinking is sound. He makes the switch. Perfect!
Unfortunately, the booby trap works differently than perceived. An enormous boulder is let loose set to
squash any who dared to breach this sacred chamber, resorting in Indiana Jones
making like a bread truck and hauling buns out of there!
The moral in this scene is quite simple:
while you can try to prepare for everything that you may be able to foresee,
you cannot be prepared for all that is ambiguous. It’s too much! How does this relate to the classic arcade
game Pitfall? No matter how high you leap, or how far you
jump, or how graceful the swinging vine is, sometimes you just miss the landing
spot and DOWN YOU GO! That is the moment
when we lose that perfect plan and the wrench gets thrown into the well-oiled
machine. A majority of people do not
handle this well, at all. Others fall
into the pit and accept that things didn’t go according to plan and plot out
the next move to get out of the pit.
God wants us to be prepared as much as
possible. Matthew, chapter 24, tells us
to be prepared for the coming of Jesus, even though we will not know when that
will happen (vs. 42, 44). He doesn’t
want us to be idle, just waiting for things to drop in our laps. However, as He states in Matthew 6, He tells
us not to be in constant worry. While
being excited about some event that happens in our lives, we do not want
anxiety to overcome us. That is a
difficult concept that everyone has, to a certain degree. It is also one of the easiest ways for Satan
to infiltrate our thoughts. The more we
allow our anxieties to take over our thoughts, the more we allow Satan to
poison our thoughts, pulling our trust away from the Lord. No Bueno, my friends!
Peter tells us, in his letter to the
exiled Christians in the regions of Asia Minor, to cast our anxieties to the
Father, because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).
What I really love is that God also tells us, “You are blessed when you
are feeling your most vulnerable to the events of life. That is the time that you need me the most.” As Matthew 5:3 puts it: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”
When we acknowledge the fact that, no
matter how mapped out we try to make things, a trap will eventually snare
us. Do we go into panic mode in attempt
to get control over those traps? You
can, but the results will still be the same.
A trip. A stumble. A change of plans. A revision.
God wants us to dust ourselves off and keep moving. These aren’t setbacks. If anything, they are delays. If Indiana Jones could keep his
level-headedness to overcome a situation that went a little south, I think that
we can overcome so much more with allowing God to get us through those
pitfalls.
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