In that column, I related a true story about a Georgia couple who discovered that a neighbor’s buffalo had fallen into their swimming pool. Seriously.
I said that life is like that sometimes. Everything is good and then suddenly we find a big buffalo in our pool. I shared how I recently discovered a big, angry “buffalo in my pool” and his name was melanoma, the most sinister kind of skin cancer. It took a little surgery to get that critter out.
But guess what? He’s in my pool again. Doctors found some more melanoma spots, so off I go for an encore surgery.
Arrrrrrgh.
Mind if I switch metaphors here?
I think I’ll transition from the whole buffalo-in-the-pool thing to something that seems even more appropriate at this point – a carnival game called Whac-A-Mole. Maybe you’ve seen it at a fair or amusement park.
A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a cabinet with holes in its top and a large, soft mallet. Each hole contains a plastic mole. As the game begins, the moles begin to randomly pop up, and the object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on their moley heads with the mallet.
It’s trickier than it sounds because as the game progresses, the moles pop up more quickly and sometimes simultaneously. Whacking the little boogers can certainly frazzle one’s nerves.
If that’s not a good picture of what life is sometimes like, I don’t know what is.
Time you get one problem beaten down and back in its hole, up pops another. I’m not trying to be a big buzz-kill here; I’m just calling it like I see it.
I get really frustrated with T.V. preachers who declare that life should be painless and if it isn’t, we must lack faith or have hidden sin in our lives. I wonder what those preachers do when they find a buffalo in their pool, or when moles start popping up faster than they can pound them down with their big old Bible-mallets.
Maybe I’m a spiritual pygmy, but there are times when I’m just too overwhelmed and exhausted to keep beating down those psycho moles. All I can do is run to God and hand Him the mallet.
Know what? I’m slowly figuring out that’s a pretty good thing to do.
Yes, Christians are to “fight the good fight of faith,” but God also tells us to be still BE STILL and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). He says He is our defender and hiding place (Psalm 5:11 & 32:7).
I think it perhaps takes more faith for us to trust God’s character, sovereignty and love than it does to frantically try to protect ourselves from all the bad stuff that can happen. I’m not advocating passivity or laziness, but rather an active faith in God that is so real and so strong that we can put down our mallets and rest, because we know He never does.
Sometimes it takes a big, scary buffalo or an onslaught of crazy moles to bring me to the end of myself. But when I get there, I realize it’s really not such a bad place to be. For, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
And when I come to the end of myself, there is Jesus.