What of the problems you can't solve?

What do you do if you have problems that deeply affect you that you can't solve?

I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about this problem of mine to no end, and there is still not a solution in sight. The only solution is to just surrender it to God. There is nothing else I can do.

None of the roads I see are worth going on, and yet it feels frustrated being where I am. It does seem like a narrow road that I am on -- hard, tight and tough -- not the wide and broad roads of shortcuts, compromise and escape.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Matthew 7:13-14 (ESV)

It is interesting that Jesus used the word "gate" and not "road". I feel the difference in nuance here is quite significant. The gates represent the "crossroads" in life, the places where we make a decision to pass through or not, and it is the choosing of which gates to pass through, the wide that leads to destruction or the narrow that leads to life.

The wide gate will be enticing and it will look like the easy way out. It will allow all your baggages and encumbrances and burdens. You can bring it all in. The gate will be wide enough for you to get through, with much, much more space to spare. However, you will so be burdened by the heaviness and sheer weight of it all that you may not go far, if at all. You may even just give up and camp at the wide gate!

The narrow gate however will only fit you, just you. You will need to drop, discard and peel away all the things that you hold on to that has no place in the narrow way. You will have to go with nothing. It is a hard way, the verse is very clear about that. You will feel vulnerable and exposed. And your only dependent and source of security are not the things that you left behind at the gate, not even yourself, but the Overseer of the narrow way, Jesus himself. He will provide the way. He will be your strength. He is your only hope.

He is my only hope.

pearlie