Don’t Mind the Bog

I keep having the same vision of someone tightening their bootstraps, that is, preparing for what seems difficult if not impossible while standing in a shadowy bog. The bog stretches far and wide; there really is no perception as to where it starts or where it ends. This person is standing in the middle of it. It doesn’t help that there’s a layer of fog hovering over the dark surface.

 

Bogs are difficult to walk through. They’re wet and muddy, full of tangling grass and reeds, and if you stand still, you’re liable to sink into a sludge that increasingly prohibits movement. You need to keep going, keep moving, even though this bog slows you down. It’s a burden no matter how you come at it.

 

I’m aware that in British slang, “the bog” is a term for a toilet or the bathroom. I feel I should reference this because I’m also aware that I have an international reader base. So if you’re from the UK, maybe this reference works in some way, too. The bog in my vision is an analogy of something that keeps you from moving freely. It’s weighing you down, yet you have to keep going. Really, it’s just a stinky situation.

 

Except between the bog and the fog, you can’t really see where you’re heading. You can’t go back, because you’re so far into the bog you can’t discern where you started in the first place. You’re really stuck, but you can’t stay still or you’ll sink in what’s feeling like quicksand.

 

Maybe you’re a person who can’t see where you’re supposed to go to next, or how to even get there. Clarity is an issue, for there is none—though you wish there were. You sense you’re meant to be doing something else entirely different in a terrain unlike the one you’re in, yet you don’t know what that is. The fog is blocking your view.

 

And you feel alone. You’ve seen some sorry displays of humanity lately, even feeling like that’s gotten worse, which might’ve contributed to the fact that you’re now standing in the middle of a bog in the middle of nowhere in the first place. A wilderness of spiritual, mental, and emotional proportions. People are people, even in or near a bog. Maybe you’ve allowed a few select individuals into your sphere, people you feel relatively safe around, safe to be vulnerable with, but all others you’ve shut out. For a time. Until you step out of your bog. Because it seems at every turn, there is an angry someone, a bully-spirited person who is trying to bulldoze you or run you off deeper into the bog rather than out of it. You’re nice and you wish others well. Nonetheless, they aren’t nice nor do they wish you well.

 

So you roll up your sleeves because you’re determined to reach the end of your time in the bog, but that doesn’t seem all that helpful. You tighten your bootstraps to lift yourself up and out of the bog, one heavy tread at a time. Except those kinds of boots with straps to tighten aren’t suitable for the bog environment, yet that’s all you have left, metaphorically speaking. There’s now sludge between your toes.

 

I’m wondering about these visions, really the same one over again. Then finally, I hear, “Don’t mind the bog.”

 

“Don’t mind the bog?” I ask.

 

“Yes. Share this. ‘Don’t pay attention to the environment. Don’t allow it to interrupt your focus.’”

 

“What focus? It seems so hard to focus on anything in those conditions.”

 

“Me,” the Lord said. “Only Me.”

 

That’s it then. It doesn’t matter, the sludge. The environment, the gear. It doesn’t matter, how high you roll your sleeves. It doesn’t matter, the fog. It doesn’t matter, the starting point or even the direction. It doesn’t matter, the unpleasantries of humanity. As long as your focus is on Yeshua. He’s the only matter of reference.

 

Simply put, maybe he’s allowed the bog crossing so that nothing else would matter to you but him.

 

You should know, if you believe in his truth, that you have the assurance of better days ahead.  

~Jeremiah 29:11 “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”

 

The entire world isn’t a bog. Eventually, the bog will be behind you. He’s your clarity and your only concern right now. He’s there with you like no other could or would. 

 

Don’t mind the bog.