We’re all faced with pressures and difficulties: unresolved relational tensions, apprehensions about the future, fear of lack or loss, our own weaknesses, even restlessness and boredom. At times we find ourselves facing this turmoil with preoccupation and introspection, seeking a solution, hoping for some resolution while lacking real peace of heart.
Jacques Philippe in his treatise Searching for and Maintaining Peace called these the “hazards of human existence,” the challenges and dilemmas so common to us all. Considering this, there are two pathways through the hazards – in one path we are invited by the Lord to walk through in his way led by his Spirit, the other is the opposing pull of our false selves that insists we make our own way, living by our own defenses. Taking the latter path, when confronted with pressures we choose to move in a downward motion, into endless cycles of trying to find a way out through with natural wisdom, striving for a satisfactory resolution. We may use our own resources, not in healthy ways, but in self-reliance in an attempt to extricate ourselves from difficulties and to find a “fix.” In this place, we resist surrender and trust; we prefer to look within while convincing ourselves we are only acting rationally. Yet the worry gnaws at us, constricts us rather than frees us, feeds our anxious habits and is a useless dead end because it can’t bring us real life and peace.
But there is another movement that draws us into the Lord. And as we respond to him we discover his waiting invitations. One invitation is to the Cross where our sin, shame, fear, pain, illness all can be brought to him for release and redemption. And as we make that exchange, every benefit of the Cross is ours! Then having come from the Cross and unburdened the sin and pain, the second place of tender summons is into the throne of grace. Here we may enter with bold confidence knowing that every need, every weakness, every plea for help is heard, given attention and answered. The Presence is here and welcomes even the smallest movement of faith towards him. His love awaits, his answers, his wisdom….how different from ours! Our resources are paltry, his gloriously unlimited. This is his beautiful call, that we leave the defenses of our self-reliance and abandon ourselves to the Cross and to the throne in joyous surrender and trust.
