Math Hurts My Brain

Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5 (NLT)

Math. Just the word can send shivers down my spine. Up until seventh grade, I was great at math. Addition, no problem. Subtraction, I was an ace. Multiplication, I knew the “times tables” backward and forward. Division, after a little struggle, I could do it in my sleep. Then came the time when math and English decided to collide. Numbers and letters got married. It was obviously a marriage of convenience, because they never seemed to get along in my head. They were always fighting, bickering, and refused to work well together. It seemed the harder I tried to understand them I just sunk lower and lower in my own stupidity. Of course, I wasn’t going to ask for help. I was a genius at math after all! Geniuses don’t need help.

How is it that something so easy now seemed so difficult? Why did something that I excelled at become something that I couldn’t comprehend? Why wasn’t I smart enough to figure it out?

I know many of you reading this know this struggle. (The struggle is real!) It’s frustrating, aggravating, and down-right humiliating when we can’t work things through. So, we don’t ask for help. We instead believe that if we just work harder, somehow our brain will just click in and we can solve all the problems. While this sometimes happens with things such as math, (Though, I believe, rarely) it doesn’t work with life.

Life starts out pretty simple but grows very complicated. We get so caught up in proving that we can figure it all out, that we don’t need any help. This is a recipe for disaster. Notice the verse says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” Why? Because our understanding is flawed. We are sinful creatures, which means our brains are corrupt. The answers we come up with will most often be wrong. They will lead us down wrong paths which ultimately result in hurt, pain, and misery. Ultimately, doing this will also remove any hope of an eternity with an all-powerful all-loving God.

You need Jesus! Put all aspects of your life into the hands of our super smart friend, Jesus. Only He has the knowledge to lead you through this life and all the way into eternity.