This weekend, on a retreat with our campus ministry group, I thought some more about the spiritual practice of “giving everything to God.”
Revs. Paul Lang and Jane Rose presented all kinds of great stuff for the students to take home and use in their own walk with Christ, in particular the practice of giving the day to God in your evening prayer.
In my last post on this idea, I wrestled with the question of what exactly we give when we “give it to God,” and whether we still have any role to play in the worries and situations that we give.
When we give our day (with all its successes, failures, surprises and worries) to God in the evening, I wonder if we are just handing it over for safe-keeping and re-processing.
Perhaps God will work within our dreams during the night to give us a fresh perspective in the morning.
Perhaps God will just give us rest, so that we have renewed energy to work on our projects and challenges.
Perhaps God even holds some things for a long time until the moment is right for bringing them back. I think about Mary “treasuring all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51) and whether those things were present in her heart as she stood by her dying son.
I think our spiritual goal is to embody what Paul writes about in Philippians 4:13 (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”) Yet the goal is unreachable unless we allow all those “things” to spend some time in the workshop of the Creator.
Pastor2K 