Life feels like a battle for many of us

Last spring, I purchased my favourite garden tool, my first time owning such an impressive implement. With the striking orange handle, well-placed black markings and a long, formidable blade that curved slightly at the end.

My first machete to chop through the undergrowth and carve a path. I quickly discovered that swinging a machete is hard work; sweat poured, and my right arm ached. Perhaps I was optimistic about what I could achieve because of all the black-and-white movies I had watched crossed-legged as a kid.

With their machetes firmly in hand, intrepid explorers carve through the African or the Amazon jungles in search of hidden temples and treasures while wrestling snakes and big cats. Inevitably bumping into Tarzan, whose mobility was much faster, swinging through the canopy high above the intruders.

The truth is that life feels like a battle for many of us.

Life is a jungle of emotions and daily troubles. We are trapped in the wilderness, dealing with what is directly ahead of us, chopping away and living with exhaustion. The lone parent tries to hold the family together, and the grieving spouse travels through grief and loss.

The businessperson trying to machete their way through inflation and desperately trying to pay staff, the devoted carer sitting by the bedside of a sick loved one, parents battling with a troubled teenager, a marriage on the rocks. All you see is the jungle of pain and emotion before you.

Every step can be challenging. I remember being lost on one of my ultralong hikes and disorientated by the bush. I found myself going in circles, losing the path, twisting my knee, and muttering to myself.

Unable to find my way, I scrambled to the highest point breaking through the dense undergrowth and constricting trees, and breathing a profound sigh of relief as I could now see below me; the perspective changed completely.

I was no longer below but high, feeling almost in the air. From this vantage point, the surge of adrenaline faded like a retreating tide, and everything felt different. I regulated myself. A change of perspective, I had been below, and now I was above. This can happen as you climb the mount of prayer or soar the hill of worship, you are lifted into a different perspective.

The perspective Jesus had in the middle of the storm was a higher view that God is in control and that he cares for you.

Be encouraged by the words of the prophet Isaiah, “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint” (Isa 40:31).

May we all hope in the Lord, and rise above our tangled circumstances.