“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” --Toni Morrison
I have a hard time with the whole "Let go and Let God" concept. It's not that I don't believe that it's the best thing to do, but I have a hard time putting it into practice. I don't think I am necessarily a control freak, but there is a part of me that likes to pretend I have a grip on things and that there is stability in my life. But really, I don't and there isn't. None of do and there isn't any in anyone's life. Any feeling of stability is an illusion. We have no control over anything and even our strongest bearings can be yanked out from under us without our consent or a warning.
We dream because we need to hold onto the hope that life can be unstressful, happy, beautiful, and perfect. We dream because we know that we have on this earth is never going to fully be any of these things. We dream because we want something to look forward to. And God says we can have something to look forward to, but we have to be looking for the right thing. Tomorrow on planet earth has never been a gaurantee. We fool ourselves if we think otherwise.
In the meantime, we think that we can uncover the "secret to success" or happiness or whatever else we think we want. We think that we can find this secret if we only try hard enough and search deep enough. But we search in the wrong places and we try when we should be letting go. Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing. Sure, we can function, but we can't do anything spectacular. Spectacular comes when we let go and let God do His work, not when we get in His way by trying to do it ourselves. Medicority is when we move on our own; spectacular is when we let God move us.
But accepting all this intellectually, I still cling to my will as if it is worth something. I cling to my will as if it can change my life. But if I am to spend any time riding the air, doing the spectacular, I must let go of my will instead of clinging to it. Power is not in a tight grip on the status quo or even a tight grip on my dreams of what life on the other side of the status quo might be; power is in surrender.
Posted by Kim at January 5, 2006 09:11 PM