Minding My Own Business

## Jesus.”

## Our Mess

I remember in my teenage years finding myself in the center of a briar patch with a friend. Out for a walk we decided to take a shortcut back to her house through the woods. We innocently wandered into the briars without really thinking ahead about what we were doing. I still don’t know how we ended up there, but it was plain once we were in the middle of them, there was only one way out: forward... very slowly. We can often be drawn into things without being aware they have hold of us. In my twenties, I was drawn to various New Age religions and studied all kinds of meditations and philosophies. Like the briar patch, I was soon entangled due to gradual, innocent curiosity; with a long road out.

## God’s Will

“Coming in from the country” implies he was going into the city. It was a case of “There I was minding my own business...”. As Simon assisted Jesus up the trail to Golgotha, I’m sure he was thinking he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was Passover, and he was seeking to go be in God’s will in God’s house. Now here he was carrying the cross of a condemned man basically involved in a death sentence procession. “If I had only been a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, I wouldn’t be caught up in this mess.” But often God looks down and stops us on our way in from the country— minding our own business. He hears us saying, “God, speak to me,” and, “I really want to serve You with my life.” So He says, “Then help this other person carry their cross today; just for a little while.”

All too often we think of it as being caught up in a mess, but we are actually in God’s will.

## Self-Check

Have you gradually gotten out of His will? Entangled in a briar patch of the world’s making? A Christian doesn’t really have their own business. We belong to Him. Are you minding your own business or

## His?

## Daughters of the Green Wood