Cobweb Problems

           I love June!  Oh, this month of June always makes me think back to those beautiful summer days on the farm in Maryland where I grew up.  When I was a kid, being on our farm was like one big adventure.  My sisters and I would jump from the barn rafters, and we would build hay forts, and we would crawl into the feed bin (I can't believe I ever did that-oh, my goodness!)  I'd shinny up the ladder to the hayloft, climbing through layers of thick cobwebs that hung like cotton candy strung on from one post to another.

            Back then spiders didn't bother me and I thought nothing of barging right through their webs (where was my head, my goodness).  The thin spider web threads would cling to me, but I laughed - with a sweep of my hand, the cobwebs were gone.  It reminds me of a time when someone once prayed, "Lord, help us to strip off like cobwebs the troubles that we have allowed to cling to us like chains."  Isn't that a great picture?  Often we make the smallest of trials - something so temporary and at worst, perhaps inconvenient - we make something lightweight into such a heavy, burdensome trial.  We allow cobweb troubles to cling to us like a chain.

            And, oh, c'mon, admit it, don't we often feel chained to our problems.  Well, listen to what II Corinthians 4:17 says, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all."  Isn't that great? Wouldn't it be glorious if we could consider all our trials to be as light and as momentary as cobwebs?  Well, we can!  God says it is possible.  Whatever troubles are weighing you down - doubt, anxiety, insecurity or fears - they feel like chains but they are not!  They become featherweight when compared to the glory yet to come.  With a sweep of a prayer and the praise of a happy heart, God can strip away any cobweb problem.

            Friend, I know it's hard to think about heavenly glories ahead.  But the fact is the pain soon will be over.  And it does no eternal good - it certainly doesn't honor God or say much of His grace -- when we allow ourselves to become depressed or weighted down over our problems... problems that feel so heavy.  So, I want you to join me today - here's the lady in the wheelchair, the quadriplegic telling you -- in believing in that eternal glory that far outweighs all our heartaches and headaches.  I want you to join me in understanding that something so grand, so glorious and so great will soon break on heaven's horizon that it will suffice for every one of your hurts and mine.  Join me in saying to God that, yes, we won't complain today and, yes, we will live as though everything we did down here on earth had a direct bearing on our capacity for joy in heaven because it does.  It's true.  So pray with me today right now, Lord of all, I can hardly comprehend the eternal glory that awaits me in heaven.  Help me to understand that my troubles are, indeed, light and momentary.  Please make me to know that these troubles if I approach them with a godly response achieve for me rich reward and glory for Your Son.  Today, give me the spirit of a child and help me to brush aside like cobwebs the problems that often feel like chains.  I ask this in your name.  Amen!

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