Different Problems, Same Root

How much are we willing to look at our failures of character and realize that although they manifest themselves in different ways and perhaps even seem different to us they are in fact merely the fruit of a far deeper root?

This thought jarred my last night as I was meandering through my thoughts, taking two seeming different items and linking them together.  What I realized as examined these two thoughts is that they simply sprang from the root of a much more buried item than what I had anticipated.

Why had I never realized this before?  Was it simply blindness on my part?  Was it a willing blindness which I subconsciously rammed into place?  Was it simply that I was simply ignoring what God was presenting in my life and continued to ignore it until, finally frustrated, He simply let me make the discovery in my own painful way?

It certainly humbles one when this is the case.  One's sophistication and a deep analysis of the multiplicity of minor flaws is swept away by the sudden realization that one's issues are not the deep and multi-faceted issues worthy of significant consideration but simply the same simple items manifested in different ways

One has to move beyond this of course if any progress is to be made.  One lets go of the concept that the issues are truly different - good.  One adapts to the idea that they have a common root - better.  But then one deals with them.

There is good news in this too, of course - if there are only a few problems, then dealing with them directly can address a multitude of the issues we face with ourselves.  That is very good news even if it does not seem like it - it means the time we spend dealing with these things can give us the greatest return for our effort, the best return on the personal investment of time and energy.

But the dealing can come in time. The first step - perhaps not the most difficult one but surely one of great difficulty - is the simple acknowledgement that most of our problems and sins are founded in a very few types of basic things which, manifested in different ways, are the root cause of our issues.