Paper cuts. Bumped elbows. Splinters.

Especially bumped elbows. That pain basically makes you stop what you’re doing until it subsides. 

Why is it that these small injuries can cause so much pain? 

There are small things in life that can cause more pain than they should: getting cut off in traffic, being shortchanged at the store or someone not replying to a text.

Somehow, we can “handle” the big pains of life, but the little pains in life can really trip us up.

Why?

James 4 shares a possible reason the small pains of life can get to us:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?” But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:1-8)

Dear friend, don’t let the splinters of life splinter you. And don’t allow them to splinter your relationship with others. Resist the devil (he’s a jerk) and submit yourself to God. 

By LaRaine Rice