Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. [Philippians 4:6-7 (MSG)]
Our land rover stopped as the bull elephant approached. He paraded around in all of his elephant magnificence and, perhaps thinking we were a cow elephant, he even fully displayed his manhood. Although our cameras were clicking away, apparently that was not the response he desired. After circling us several times, he turned his back to us, raised his tail, and did what elephants do in the grass of the Serengeti! While we held our noses and looked in dismay at the enormous pile in the road, he lumbered away.
Elephants in the Serengeti don’t like to be ignored and neither do elephants in the living rooms of our lives. There’s an elephant sitting in the room whenever an obvious but unpleasant truth is being disregarded or going unaddressed. There have been several elephants in my life that I thought could be ignored. “If I pay no attention to it,” I thought, “maybe, it will just go away.” Problems, however, like elephants, don’t take being ignored lightly. If we disregard them in the living room, they’ll just stomp around the bedroom at night and keep us awake; they may even follow us to work or visit other family members. Ignored elephants will leave a big pile of stink behind them and unheeded problems do the same thing. Paying no attention to a problem doesn’t make it disappear; it just gets bigger, messier and harder to clean up.
We shouldn’t ignore the elephants in our lives; we need to give them to God in prayer and look to His word for guidance. In answer to our prayers, however, God will probably hand us a shovel and tell us to get to work scooping up the mess. It’s often an unpleasant and difficult task, but it can be done. With God’s guidance, I’ve managed to clean up the assorted stinky piles the elephants in my life created. The task, however, would have been far easier if I had just properly acknowledged the problems when they first appeared and given them the attention they originally demanded.
Impossible situations can become possible miracles. [Robert H. Schuller]
“If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God, “I’ll get you out of any trouble. I’ll give you the best of care if you’ll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times; I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party. I’ll give you a long life, give you a long drink of salvation!” [Psalm 91:14-16 (MSG)]
