Untangle Me

When he was alone with his disciples,
he went over everything, sorting out the
tangles, untying the knots.

Mark 4:34 (The Message)

I’m here to tell you that my husband can untangle anything! Early during our dating I found him with a coed’s tangled mess of necklaces on a table before him. Sometimes the process took longer than others but his patience always paid off, he never failed to unravel the knots. He was the “go to” guy for sorting out all sorts of tangles.

Getting into a knot is much easier than getting out of one. Like a pile of tangled necklaces, the life choices that I make can suddenly knot me up. The harder I try to detangle myself, the more tightly knotted I become. I need a patient hand to unravel me.

Jesus saw a lot of tangled, knotted up people. For some their knots were of their own making. For others their tangles came about due to illness, cultural estrangements or political decisions. But all of them needed the patient hand of Jesus to sort them out and he never failed to unravel every single knot. There were those, like the Pharisees, who in their panic tightened their knots, but for those who wanted to be un-tangled Jesus spoke, “Your sins are forgiven.”

It doesn’t matter how my knots came into being. But I have to stop running around trying to untie them myself! My feeble efforts only make them tighter. The patient hand of Jesus will take my tangled messes and unravel them to beauty.

Jesus, time spent with you

makes things far less complicated and tangled.

Help me to remember that whatever the situation,

Your patient hand will unravel it.

Amen.