Hold Me

Like so many others, my heart has been heavy lately. I’ve tried and failed to lift my own spirits with distraction, food, family, entertainment, etc. It helps for a little while, but the undercurrent of unrest and fear still courses like an underground spring, and I feel its vibration in my core.

So I turn to my Bible. It’s more bracing, more solid, its unchanging nature and absolute truth something to hold onto so I don’t get swept away, but the verses I’ve been reading haven’t felt personal. I’m reading through the Psalms, the ones that describe what God’s people went through back in the day over and over again.

God blesses them. They forget, ignore, or take Him for granted. He lets them experience the consequences of those choices. They cry out to Him, and He lifts them up, sometimes giving them what they want and always giving them what they need.

I’ve been thankful for the reminders of God’s faithfulness, but I never really doubted it, so my heart hasn’t been pierced the way I wanted it to be. In my heart and mind, those piercings are evidence of God’s nearness to me. They make me feel seen and included, and I welcome them even when they are uncomfortable.

Well, today, my heart was satisfied. As I read, I realized that God wasn’t inactive when His people felt alone, forgotten, or even punished. He absent or sitting things out. What they perceived to be inactivity on His part was actually His active intervention in their lives. By letting them experience the natural consequences of choices dictated by human wisdom, God was actively drawing His people back where they belonged, fully submitted to and reliant upon Him, the place where He could do them the most good.

We say we trust God. We say we believe that He’s good and His ways are best, but most of us say that while resisting His activity in our lives and doing things on our own. That’s a problem. When we do that, we fool ourselves into thinking God isn’t making good on His promises, that He’s watching, maybe, but uninvolved in our lives, and that’s just not true.

God is waiting, arms outstretched, for His children to come to Him. Not just to say that they trust Him, but to demonstrate that trust the same way my grandchildren demonstrate their trust in me and the rest of our family, by coming to us, letting us hold them, letting us protect them, and letting us give them what they need.

Letting God hold us means surrendering control, of course. It means doing things His way instead of ours, and that’s hard—really hard—but it’s always worth it. Our very present and involved Father may not always give us what we want, but He does always give us what we need: Him.