Several times a day I walk the well-worn path between our two barns.

It’s the same path four previous generations of my family has walked as well. That equals over a hundred years of wearing down the ground. Over time, a rock was exposed. It barely stuck up — just enough to stub a toe and make you stumble, but on more than one occasion I dropped or spilled what I was carrying.

Then one day I asked myself, “Why did I keep tripping over that rock? Why didn’t I just get rid of it?”

And so I did. Using my trusty shovel, excavating that rock took all of five minutes.

That rock reminds me of the things in our lives that trip us up in our relationship with God. If we don’t take deliberate actions to remove them from our path, they can become, in the words of today’s verse, our calamity.

Jesus wants to walk beside you every step of the way throughout your whole life. If you let Him, He will always catch you when you stumble.