The Problem of Problems

A math class and life have a lot in common. Both of are filled with problems. Problems abound these days. I heard of one businessman who said that he gets two or three calls each day from President Obama. When asked why the president was calling him, he said, “He likes to talk with someone who has more problems than he has.”

The fact of the matter is that everyone faces problems. The question is—what are we to do about them? An old baseball story tells of Jimmie Foxx coming to the plate with Lefty Gomez on the mound and Bill Dickey catching. Dickey began flashing signs to Gomez telling him which pitch to throw. Gomez shook off every sign. Finally, Dickey called time-out and went out to the mound. He asked Gomez, “What do you want to throw to him?” Gomez said, “Nothing. Let’s just stall around, and maybe he’ll get mad and go away.” That’s what we wish our problems would do—just go away. Unfortunately, most of them do not. Just as it is in a math class, we have to work on solving the problems given us.

Jerry Seinfeld said that they are always showing on television how effective laundry detergent is in removing stains from clothes. They show a man with bloodstains all over his T-shirt. Seinfeld said, “I mean, come on—you got a T-shirt with bloodstains all over it; maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem.”

Since we can’t solve all of our problems at once, we have to decide what is our biggest problem. What do we need to start working on first?

In Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Seuss muses about what could have caused the Grinch to have such a negative approach to life. Exactly what was the Grinch’s main problem? Seuss writes:
“It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”

And that is our main problem also. We often try to deal with our surface problems, but our main problem is deeper. It is a problem of the heart.

Haddon Robinson, in writing about the challenge of preaching, said, “Sermon ideas ignite when the flint of people’s problems strikes the steel of God’s Word.” When we take this problem of the heart and begin reading through the Word, the sparks begin to fly. Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus said, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean.” (Matt. 15:18).

If that is the bad news, here is the good news. There is no problem too big for God’s power, and no person too small for God’s love. Life gives us some big problems, but God cares about us and our problems. He can give us the power to solve them. Trust Him with your problems today.