The definition of fragile is “easily broken or damaged.”
When I completed my OBGYN residency at Bethesda Naval Hospital, I received orders to report to Subic Bay Naval Hospital in the Philippines for a 3-year tour of duty. The US Navy hired a local moving company to pack our household belongings into 5 large wooden crates that would be trucked to the shipyards in Baltimore, travel down the Atlantic & through the Panama Canal, across the Pacific & to Manila. From Manila, our crates would be trucked across roads filled with potholes through the Philippine countryside to our doorstep at Subic Bay. Quite a trip!
We arrived in the Philippines about 2 months prior to our household goods. It was with great anticipation that we watched the truck with our 5 crates pull up to our Philippine home. One by one they opened the crates. One by one we viewed the broken & damaged contents of those crates. Our piano had been destroyed by the placement of bicycles directly on top of it. The upholstery of our furniture had been torn to shreds. Interestingly enough, our glassware was intact with only one broken piece. But nearly everything else had been destroyed or severely damaged.
It is my observation that we are all like the contents of our 5 crates. It doesn’t matter what you’re made of or how tough you think you are, the journey through life can destroy you unless you have been packed with care. You see, it wasn’t the trip across the oceans that destroyed our household goods. It was the packers in Maryland who caused all the damage.
Jesus doesn’t promise us an easy life if we choose to follow Him. He doesn’t promise that we won’t have trials. I think of His cousin, John the Baptist, who was imprisoned & then beheaded by Herod. There are indications in Scripture that John was tempted to feel sorry for himself. Perhaps he even felt fragile. But catch the point. In the end, John was not fragile because he was beheaded! He had preached the Gospel message. He had preached repentance. In other words, He had denied self & followed Jesus. And when John did that, he was “packed with care” by a loving God.
Jesus said it this way in Mark 8:34-38… If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take us his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life (use local packers, i.e. yourself) will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s (let Jesus pack your life) will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? What can a man give in return for his soul?
We are fragile. We have 3 options in which we can respond to this fact: 1) Deny it, 2) Focus on our fragility & feel sorry for ourselves, or 3) Embrace it & allow Jesus to care for us & “pack” our stuff.
The first 2 options are ways we try to save ourselves. The third option results in a life filled with the Spirit who gives us love, peace, joy, & so much more. The third option led Paul to say “… I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content.” (Philippians 4:11)
We can all learn to be content if we will allow Jesus to “pack” our lives. And just to be clear, allowing Jesus to “pack” my life means giving EVERYTHING I own to Him! It means that I allow Him to prioritize the “stuff” in my life, to set my schedule, to order my relationships as I submit to Him each day. And when suffering comes, & it will for all of us because the journey through life has huge waves & lots of potholes, He will get us through it because we are “packed” with care in Him.
