Reached your limit?

My iPhone is out of storage space. As I try to retrieve some super important piece of information from this handheld device that functions as the second half of my brain, it just refuses to work. You have no more storage space it tells me. And I’m left staring at the screen wondering why I did not know this was a thing that could happen.

Apparently, you can store too much stuff on your phone. And when you do that, your phone will quit working correctly until your either buy more storage or delete all of the random pictures and videos taking up space on your phone’s memory. I had no idea. Google had to tell me what to do. Because I can’t seem to survive the day without a working phone.

Side note: How did we do life back in the old days when we had to remember people’s phone numbers in our literal brains or get directions from a paper map folded in our glove boxes? I don’t know, but I do know that as I stared at the spinning blue circle on my phone and waited to see if I had fixed the problem, I realized it may be more than just my phone that’s on overload.

Life has been overwhelming lately, has it not? As we watched the 46th President of the United States be inaugurated this week at the capital, it was hard to forget that just the week before it was overrun with an angry mob. It felt like a bit of whiplash. And even in watching the familiar peaceful passing of power, we realized that life still has a long way to go to return to normal. The socially distanced crowd was packed with police officers and National Guard, surrounded by masked politicians and celebrities. You could feel the weight of the hope the country is placing in this changing of the guard. Perhaps this can help us heal. Perhaps bridges can begin to be built. Perhaps.

But. The world is still partially shut down nearly a year after this pandemic began; the divide in our nation racially, socially, and economically is larger than it ever has been. My kids and your kids and kids around the world are staring into screens for days attempting to go to school. We can’t gather, we can’t hug, we can’t even see each other smile. And our hearts and our brains are struggling to process all of this. I find myself gathering the moments, the events, the needs, the people, and the worries around me into my own invisible storage bin. And holding them there.

Because I don’t know what else to do. Maybe you feel it too? I tend to hold the heavy things close; to store the hard parts of life in the deepest part of my heart hoping that by simply holding on I might somehow be able to reassemble all the broken pieces in me and in those I love. I say things like: I’ve got this. I know how to solve this problem. If I just hold on a little longer, things will get better. I can handle it. Everything is fine. We all do this. Our mouths form those words while our souls sink under the weight of everything we try to hold together..

And the problem is this: we will run out of storage space long before life runs out of hard things to throw our way. And then what?

I stare at my locked-up phone and wonder where to put the things it is holding. A whole year’s worth of information? Where will it all go?

“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen [us]  by his Spirit — not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength” (Ephesians 4:14 Msg.).

The truth is; we are not meant to hold on to it all.

Never has there been a season where we needed to know this more. When too much of life gets piled into our arms and too much gets stored on our internal hard drives, we have to know what to do. We have to know where to go. Or we will lock up as tight as my iPhone. And nothing will work.

God didn’t create us to hold everything. He never intended for us to be able to carry the load of all that goes wrong here in this world or in our lives.

He built us to need him. He built our souls with holes that can only be filled by him. It’s why we can’t hold on by ourselves.

“God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in times of trouble” (Psalm 46:1). And I think that here in the middle of this complicated season, he wants us to learn how to believe this; how to live this out in our real lives; the ones full of decisions with no good answers, cranky teenagers, canceled events, and dreary days.

Apparently, the way that you fix a phone with a problem like mine is to plug it into the wall, give it extra storage space and leave it for a bit while it unloads everything it’s been carrying around.

And I hear the Spirit whisper over the crowded countertops where the phone sits charging, “This is how it works with you too. You come to me. You bring me all of the things. Lay them down. I am your source. Bend your knees and let me have what you’ve been holding.”

It’s not a magic spell or an immediate cure, though. Handing over all of the hard things that we carry around doesn’t mean that they will be any less hard. It just means we give up being responsible for carrying them by ourselves.

So, I know it’s been a long month already and the weeks stretch out ahead still full of uncertainity. But, take a minute today and think about your own storage limit. When was the last time you downloaded some of the parts of life that you are carrying around? When was the last time you admitted that you can’t do it anymore?

Be encouraged, friend. You don’t even have to Google how to fix this. Bend your knees, bow your head. Jesus is right there with you. And I promise, even if it’s years’ worth of stuff you’ve been holding on to? He can handle it. He is indeed the One who holds all things together. And everything tends to work better when he does the holding. Alleluia. Amen.

“For in him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17).