Are You as Frustrated as a Bird Looking for a Worm in Astroturf? Part One
Luke 21: 25 – 28
Jesus spoke of a time when there would be “distress among nations, with perplexity…” and of “men’s hearts failing them.”
This summarily speaks of a time of great frustration. Perhaps you personally are facing a time of frustration. Certainly, it appears a broad segment of our nation is experiencing an epidemic of frustration. You know frustration!
Words such as stressed-out, uptight, and burnout spatter our conversations. We are a generation of high-strung temperaments with short fuses that cause explosions.
Frustration is an emotion fathered by anger. It causes our blood pressure to rise, our breathing to accelerate, the pitch and volume of our voice to heighten.
Frustration results from us reacting against seemingly impossible circumstances.
One country comic said, “It makes me so mad I could eat a goatburger!” That’s frustration.
A little boy going fishing with his dad asked the man from whom he was buying .25 worth of worms, “Mister, how many worms do you get for .25?” The man replied, “Son, I will do right by you. Life is too short to spend time counting worms.”
Life is too short to live frustrated. Yet, many people spend most of their life as frustrated as a bird looking for a worm in astroturf. You don’t have to!
Frustration is the fruit of our failure to succeed and achieve. It is the outgrowth of our inability to reach a goal. It occurs when our hopes fade and our dreams die.
Frustration is a Ulysses on his odyssey coming to a rain-swollen river which he must cross and, finding it flooded, wades out into it waist-deep and beats it with a chain. Such a frustrated response does no good. How many times have you found your stream flooded at the wrong time and you flogged it with a chain?
Frustration is a little boy who has beat on a locked door until exhausted and finally sits down and cries. Have you been there? Sure, all of us have been.
When that which promises to be exhilarating proves to be exasperating, we end up frustrated.