Learning to Let Go(d)....

"If only....."     From the time we are teenagers, I guess, and notice that we are not as good, as strong, as beautiful, as smart, etc. as we wish we were, or as our friends or others are, we think to ourselves, "If only I were more in control of my life....if only I were a better person....if only I were smarter, or more sensitive, or a better person....if I were a better student, mother, father, Christian.....if only..."

But the truth is that none of us will ever be strong enough, smart enough, prayerful enough, wise enough, organized enough.... to contol our lives.  In our twenties, or whenever we begin to try building our own lives apart from that of our parents, we quickly begin to learn what the Israelites had to learn the hard way: 

The Lord did not choose you and set His affection on you because you were more numerous than other poeples, for you were the fewest of all peoples (Deut.7:7).

 

It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of the land...understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people (Deut. 9:5-6).

 

Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices and say, "This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: 'Your ancestery and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.  On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloth.  No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you.  Rather, you were thrown into an open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

 

Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your own blood, and as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, 'Live!'  I made you grow like a plant of the field.  You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels.  Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.

 

Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.  I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you', declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine....[read the rest of the story in Ezekiel 16 -- it is most descriptive and engaging -- I told you the Lord gives us a child's picture book, and this is one of the most descriptive.]

 

In her visions, Julian of Norwich saw the great mercy of God, which bends down with the greatest love and compassion over the weakest of men, the greatest of sinners.  "As a mother has compassion on the child of her womb," says the Lord (Is. 49)....    In Hebrew, the word for 'mercy' is related to the word for 'womb.'  And Julian says that the weaker we are, the more pitiful, the more lost in sin, the more the love of God is drawn to our helplessness.  Is this not what Jesus showed us, taught us about the love of His Father?  The parable of the Prodigal Son, the words, "It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick..,"  all of Jesus' miracles -- all point to the same thing:  it is when we finally acknowledge that we cannot, that we are powerless, helpless, that the mercy of God bends low over us.

 

We go from trying to build the tower of Babylon in our lives to the humility of Abraham who 'knew not where he was going, but trusted the Lord to lead him.'  Psalm 91 is the portrait of the man/woman of God:

 

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust."

 

And Jeremiah says this: 

 

This is what the Lord says:

'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom

or the strong man boast of his strength

or the rich man boast of his riches,

but let him who boasts boast about this:

that he understands and knows me,

that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,

justice, and righteousness on earth,

for in these I delight,' declares the Lord (9:23-24).

 

When we are finally ready to acknowledge that we are not now -- and will never be -- smart enough, strong enough, good enough, organized enough, or whatever, to run our lives successfully, we are finally ready to let go and let God.....and what a great, inexpressible relief it is to let Him be God and Lord of our lives!  I understand the lame man leaping for joy when he was touched by Christ!  That is exactly the expression of my spirit leaping for joy when I am finally freed from the shakles of my own 'trying'!