Change Is Such Hard Work

[Guest]

Thank you, Billy Crystal.

When dealing with personal trials, we're often given two paradigms to help us attack the problem.  Last night my daughter came to me with some problems.  In our discussion I realized that these two paradigms work hand-in-hand.

1) The rocks in the backpack analogy.  We need to work on the rocks with a pickaxe and chip away until they are small enough to remove from our backpack.
2) Pray not for trials to be removed, but for strength to overcome our trials.

I pray almost every day (multiple times some days) that we can have strength to overcome our trials.  Only recently did I realize that the pickaxe is the method he uses to strengthen us.

As I shared the rocks in the backpack analogy with her, she asked,"But I feel like I am hitting it with a pickaxe and it isn't chipping at all.  I might as well punch a brick wall with my fist."

I thought about that for a while and I realized that I had experienced the same thing.  Something I'd worked on for nearly 50 years made me realize that the rocks didn't ever chip away.  But what had actually happened to me?  They didn't chip.  I still had them in my backpack.  But I had grown.

To complete the analogy, my practice of chipping away every day didn't even make a dent in the adamantium rocks in my backpack.  There was no getting them out.  But my daily practice of working on them made me bigger.  The trial itself never changes.  We need to change.  And the method the Lord has of letting us grow is to lean on his strength to use the pickaxe.

But I don't believe it is all about strength.  In this analogy, it is about size.  We grow.  When we've struggled with something for many years, we get bigger.  The rocks now seem like pebbles.  I've been working on many things.  The fact I'm overcoming one major rock now makes other rocks smaller as well -- even rocks I'd placed on a lower priority.  I had grown.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Guest