There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff. Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death. That’s when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.
He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.
ANCIENT JAPANESE STORY
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Infidelity and divorce attempted to chase us off a cliff to our destruction, but did not succeed. Yet even now, swinging from the vine, we see and hear the statistics and predictions about blended families and second marriages – and see all too well the real dangers and precariousness of our journey.
And though our eyes are open to the dangers and the threats; we fix our focus on the strawberries. On the goodness. On His goodness. On all the sweetness we know He has waiting for us along the way. And we fully intend to enjoy every delicious one, rather than waste our time in worry.
We are bent to fix things, to try and put together a clear picture and a neat package. But the real Christ life has always looked messy, and often is marked with long roundabout seasons of waiting. Of uncertainty. And deliberate choices for faith in the midst of exactly those circumstances that attempt to intimidate you with their hopelessness.
But oh how those choices please our Father. In a way that hardly any other thing does – so much so that we have the stories of Job and the like. It is an opportunity we only have here on earth – one day all will be clear. But this day, we all have the opportunity to embrace the freedom that lies within our limitations and circumstances, and from a stance of sweet smelling faith, enjoy every strawberry of today.