Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans. – Proverbs 16:3
As teacher, yearbook adviser, and senior class sponsor, I have recently had several students come to me after class in tears or even start to well up with tears in the middle of class. These students were some of the brightest and most motivated in the entire high school—but they were also some of the busiest.
In each case, it wasn’t a single assignment or task that had them so distressed. It was simply that the total number of things on their to-do list had grown to the point where it no longer seemed possible to get them all done.
Even as adults, we can sometimes become so overwhelmed by all of the things going on in our lives–work, chores, bills, family, church, health problems–that we feel paralyzed. It seems like we may as well just give up because we couldn’t possibly keep up with all of our responsibilities anyway.
Anne Lamott tells the story of her younger brother who had been assigned a research paper on birds. The task seemed insurmountable to his ten-year-old mind: “He was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder, paper and pencils, and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then our father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
I can almost imagine God putting his arm around us when we begin to get overwhelmed by the cares of this world and saying something similar.
In Proverbs 16:3, we get a simple, but effective approach to accomplishing even the most arduous tasks: pray and plan. All that’s left then, is to follow through one step at a time (Proverbs 21:5), knowing that we have our Father by our side strengthening us (Phil. 4:13).
Life can certainly be overwhelming at times, but we should resist despair, remembering whose we are (Rom. 14:8) and what our reward will one day be when our work here is through (Jas. 1:12; Heb. 10:34-36; Rom. 8:28).
—Tyler Walker, The Weekly Bulletin, April 20, 2014