The Snares in our Life

Proverbs 3:25-26
"Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared."

The other morning I padded out to my cold deck in my bare feet, eager to see the subtle color changes in my backyard.  Within three steps I found my face fully encased in a large sticky spider web.  My eyelashes instantly seemed to be glued shut, and without my vision I was even more grossed out by the sensations of the web around my entire face.  Fear quickly began to grow because I had no idea where the creator of the web, the artful orb-weaving spider, was lurking. As I jumped around pulling sticky webbing out of my lashes, I stepped on a cold, dense, squishy thing that gave way under my foot. My senses were on full-alert now, because I knew instantly the pest under my foot was a slug. I gasped in horror and danced around the deck like a crazy woman, sliding my foot along to rid it from slime and slug-parts.  I then walked around the wet yard scraping my foot along the grass like I was skating on a ice-covered pond. The word "gross" really doesn't go far enough in situations such as these, nor do the words "wretchedness," "torture," "torment," or "freakish misery". I ran from the yard to the shower and scrubbed my skin and  hair until there was no hint of outside pests or even natural oil left on my body. I then went out and salted the remainder of the slug and a couple of its evil friends.

Life can be like that sometimes.  We can be cruising along with every good intent, then we're struck by a temptation or calamity that we have to deal with, and deal with now! How nice it would be to have a warning that we were about to encounter something awful. I'm just saying...

But God tells us that we should have no fear of sudden disaster. He obviously knows we will encounter them, after all we do live in a fallen world. He tells us to have confidence in Him, that he will keep our foot from being snared, because once those feet go walking towards trouble, the rest of our body comes as a package deal and before we know it, we're stuck.  God is the creator of all things and therefore can and will provide a way to get through, over, or around, anything that threatens to pull us away from His loving arms.

How easy it is for me to forget these things. My natural temperament is peppered by fear. "What ifs" prowl around my head just looking for a place to pounce. But God gently reminds me to "Be still as know that I am God", and when I really do this, I rest and am at peace. Praise the Lord for He is good.