Creating Thorns

As we grow from infancy to adulthood both physically and spiritually, learning to be content with God’s grace is a constant challenge for many of us. We spend a lot of time learning to be independent as children and as adults we spend a lot of time valuing the independence that we’ve gained and finding the balance between independence and dependence can take time, patience and most of all faith. To the world dependence can be nonsense. Most people worship power and strength that independence can provide. Having to depend on others is viewed as a weakness that is despised above all things.  The world teaches us to conceal our vulnerability, or we will be hurt, and it teaches us to hide our weakness, or we will be taken advantage of.  The world teaches us to camouflage our inadequacies with self-confidence, self reliance and self assurance, so that we can build a heaven for ourselves here on earth.  The world teaches us that we can help ourselves, that we can do what we need to do on our own, and that all the answers we need we can find in ourselves. (But) The first time we find our selves in a situation where we really need help, we have already independently lived to a point where we have become so full of the self, that we are afraid to ask for the help we need or we reject help when it is offered because we fear what others might say about us. This can happen in every aspect of our lives, individually, socially, and professionally. Subsequently, we end up making difficult decisions and unfortunately we create our own thorns before we realize that all we had to do was acknowledge our weakness, admit our inability to change the situation on our own, and ask in faith for God’s grace and mercy to intervene. Regardless of the pain, we face reality and make a better decision to move forward. Why not move forward through God’s grace?