Good morning…
I did stuff I shouldn’t have done. I didn’t do everything I should have. I’m up tonight, obsessing about “things I’ve done and things I’ve left undone.”
This phrase – “things I’ve done and things I’ve left undone” – this phrase shaped my mind as a child as, by rote, I recited it each Sunday as part of our Lutheran liturgy. With some of the things I’ve done, I feel really bad. With things I’ve left undone, at myself I am mad. Now in the darkness of this night, my bad and my mad, they droop into sad.
Sitting here in silence, I feel drawn back to an image texted to me by a friend in the middle of yesterday’s whirlwind. I looked past it then. I look at it now.
“Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy,” says Elisabeth Elliot. My obsessing mind is restless. My impatience with myself is thick. Yet my middle-of-the-night restlessness, this changes nothing. My impatient obsession about my flaws, this accomplishes nothing.
“Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?” Jesus asks in Matthew 6:27 (NLT). Of course the answer is no. Restlessness. Impatience. Worry. These relentless obsessions change nothing, except eroding peace and stealing joy.
“Peace does not dwell in outward things,” explains Elisabeth. In other words, peace does not dwell in “things I’ve done and things I’ve left undone.” Instead, peace “dwells in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.”
In these dark hours, I quietly wait on God. Do I trust that He has all things – things I’ve done and things I’ve left undone – safely in the palm of His hands? For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling (Isaiah 30:15, ESV).
Dear God, please make me willing.
Return.
Rest.
Quiet.
Trust.
My peace and my joy depend on You.
…Sue…
