Who Added The Weights? 2/28/2023

 Good Morning,

The day started with prayer and a very hot cup of Door County Highlander Grog Coffee. Our two dogs are sitting near by and it is time to write. 

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. 

Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us set aside every weight, and sin that so easily ensnares us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. 

Last weekend I wrote about helping a friend change out the water piping in his home and our experience doing so. Some of the work did include using pipe wrenches as well as a reciprocating saw. It has been quite some time since I used those tools and the first time I went to loosen a pipe or cut one loose, I thought to myself "who added the weight to these tools"? 

They felt heavier than what I remembered them to be. It wasn't the tools that weighed more. It was the fact that as I get older I am not used to that type of work and I guess I am out of shape when it comes to that type of work.  It was a hard cold fact that I faced. The job was completed and God blessed us with a good outcome. 

I do know for sure that if I were to be doing this work on a regular basis, I would invest in a couple of aluminum pipe wrenches to make the job a little easier. I would get rid of the "heavy weights". 

But this led me to a thought to share. Life can be tough at times and it is tougher when we carry with us the weights of things that we don't need. Anger is one of those things that can cause us to continually be at war, on edge, and gut wrenching miserable at times. As habitual anger lingers within our lives, it eats away at us like a cancer. It grows so that little things outside of our control cause us to fester with anger and make us respond in such a way that we are in sin. Little issues cause us to turn them all into big issues, just be our reactions. 

Life becomes a a muddy quagmire of our own making. If you were to run a race, would you fill your pockets with rocks to slow you down? For sure that would be a hearty NO. Yet we drag anger with us through life and all it does is slow us down and interrupt good times with bad outcomes. As with many things, anger becomes a habit and often is addictive. It crawls up on us and we turn to it before we turn to love, forgiveness, peace, joy, patience and self control.

We need to look into the tool box of our lives and lighten the load by tossing out habitual anger which weights us down from experiencing God, loving others, and living the fruit of the Spirit. 

Have a great day. 

Marty