Ask Andrea

Dear Gentle Readers,

The following article has been adapted from the website that spawned this one, All For Christ. It is no longer being updated at this time. This is for all of us trying to fit twenty-six hours into twenty-four, all who feel overwhelmed, all who find letting go and letting God have control as difficult as I do.

And if you feel like you’re juggling a half dozen bowling balls . . . I’m sending a great big bear hug at’cha.

Love in Christ,

Andrea Graham

As we go through life, one by one, we are given pool balls, and the occasional bowling ball, by various folks with the instruction: Juggle. Do not ever let the balls fall to the floor. No matter what, you must keep the balls in the air. It is a matter of life and death. If you drop the wrong ones, they will explode in your face.

This, however, would seem a very cruel joke: no matter how hard we try, we can never keep all the balls in the air. There is simply too many, and we know that not all of the balls are important, but no one will tell us which ball doesn’t matter and which ball will kill us if we just let it fall to the ground. So we keep scrambling to keep the balls in the air. For each ball we manage to get back up in the air, another five fall to the ground.

So what are we to do? The answer is hilariously simple: stop juggling!

I know what you’re thinking. “But you said keeping the balls in the air is a matter of life and death.”

It is. I didn’t say drop the balls. I said stop juggling them. Why bother? We’re never going to be able to keep them all in the air no matter how hard we try, and how are we to know the one we drop wasn’t the mega-important one that absolutely must stay in the air?

The answer is very simple. You can’t keep the balls in the air. I can’t keep the balls in the air. None of us can. So what are we to do? We can’t drop the balls, can we?

You see my friends, we can’t keep the balls in the air, but Someone can. His Name is Jesus and He is the Son of God and a born juggler. He can juggle your balls, He can juggle my balls. And He can do it at the same time. Why? Because He knows which balls need to stay in the air and which ones need to fall to the ground. He also knows which balls aren’t in the air that need to be, and He can pick them up and put them back in the air again-without letting a single ball that needs to be in the air fall.

So there is only one thing to do: give our balls to Jesus! He loves us very much, He is literally dying to juggle our balls for us. So give them to Him!

Now, He likes to use your hands in His juggling, and sometimes it can be hard to tell He’s there, holding up our hands and showing us which balls to catch and when. But the results will be plain. When we see ourselves keeping balls in the air that we kept dropping before, and giving up the heavy bowling balls we’ve been shouldering for years, that’s truly the Master at work.

One last warning: I know how tempting it is to try to juggle the balls, we see them right before our eyes, suspended in the air with nothing we can see holding them up, and our fleshy nature pushes us to try to juggle a few. But don’t do it! Resist giving that ball a juggle, ask Jesus for the strength to resist the temptation. Touching that ball will only result in it crashing to the ground again, and you will have to start all over because before you know it, you will be trying to juggle them all by yourself again, and juggling them in your own strength and ability will have the same result as it is having now. I myself fall prey to this trap repeatedly. It is from the enemy, so rebuke that old serpent and put your focus back on the Master.

So, today, right now, lets stop juggling and hand the balls life throws at us over to the Master Juggler, and let Him sort them out.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Is It Just Me?, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Jo’s Cafe, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Random Acts of Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.