“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
A situation. A relationship. A difficult decision. Feelngs about the way someone treated you or yours. Your response to a verdict or tragedy, or just your view of the world in its present state.
Like a tangled ball of Christmas lights the size of a city, life can be complicated. Sometimes you cope by avoiding the mass altogether. Most times, the tangle cannot be ignored but just the thought of untwisting all of those knots overwhelms you.
There is one fool-proof method for straightening out any mess: start small. For example, don’t try to understand and conquer every negative emotion you have. Pick just one and leave the rest for another day. Forgiveness for a wrong, especially a big one, usually happens in layers anyway. God knows this and wants to help you detangle the labyrinth one day at a time.
Relationships have complicated written into their DNA. Still, the solution is the same. Start with one broken part like communication and focus only on that for a while. You might work on just the listening part of communication or on keeping calm when it’s your turn to talk.
Christmas time is a reminder that God tackled our biggest problem when He “started small” in the form of a tiny baby Who strung together a life of thirty-three years. Weaving Himself into the calendar of human history straight to your heart, He invites you to roll all your complications onto Him because He cares for you. Nothing in your past is too complicated for Him to heal; no present situation He can’t simplify, but it doesn’t usually happen in one big save. He starts small, and in powerful ways He unfurls a beauty and clarity in you that is incomparable even when it’s complicated.
What small start will you make today?