Life Is Difficult

Matthew 4:1-11

It is difficult indeed. It is filled with tests, trials, temptations.

First appearing in 1914, the Morton Salt girl   and her umbrella with the slogan, "When it rains it pours." How many of you have ever quoted that little advertising slogan in a time of crisis? "When it rains, it pours." Sometimes it seems that way...that everything goes wrong all at once.

Forbes magazine printed an interesting little item sometime back. It said, "Mosquitoes cause us trouble but not as much as they could. There are about 41,000 mosquitoes for each of us." Ouch!

Sometimes it seems that all 41,000 mosquitoes gang up on us at once. As someone said about Murphy's Law - if anything goes wrong, it will" - "Murphy was an optimist." 

In 1916, Georgia Tech University in Atlanta played a football game against Cumberland University, a tiny law school. The Tech team was a mighty football powerhouse and rolled over Cumberland by a score of 222 to 0. Needless to say, Tech also pretty well beat the Cumberland players to a pulp.

Toward the end of the game, Cumberland quarterback Ed Edwards fumbled a snap from center. As the Tech lineman charged into his backfield, Edwards yelled to his backs, "Pick it up! Pick it up!"

Edwards's fullback, seeing the monsters rush in who had battered him all day, yelled back, "Pick it up yourself, you dropped it."

That fullback was tired of being beaten to a pulp, and we sympathize with him. Life does that to us sometimes. Life is difficult. Jesus was led into the wilderness. Sometimes we must enter that wilderness as well.

Questions to Ponder:

• Has life been difficult for you?

• Have you dropped something important in your life?

• If so, do you need to pick it up yourself?

In His Service,
Terry Phillips