I can't arrange for it, part 2: Waiting & Letting Go

God is good.

On days like today when I have easy classes to teach & supervise, I tend to have lots of time to read, do some bible study, etc. while the students are doing their work. I just happened to grab this book I've read a couple of times now, called Desire by John Eldridge. I grabbed it because I was pretty sure it spoke into the "arranging" I talked about in my last post and I wanted to be reminded of what it said. So, at some point during the morning, I flipped towards the end of the book, looking for the section I was hoping for, when a section title caught my eye. It was entitled Waiting, and this is what it said,

To wait is to learn the spiritual grace of detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St. John of the Cross lamented that "the desires weary and fatigue the soul, for they are like restless and discontented children, who are ever demanding this or that from their mother, and are never contented." Detachment is coming to the place where those demanding children are at peace.

When I read this two things went through my mind. First, this describes exactly what I've been feeling: the restlessness, the groaning, the demanding emotions in my heart to know the outcome. Secondly, I've been here before. It was only in late September, a month and a half ago, that the Lord was teaching and instructing my heart in this same issue. Oh, how quickly I forget!

At the top of a journal entry from September 22, 2008, I penned this question: What do I need to let go of? Maybe that's a question I need to be asking on a more regular basis. Right now, I need to let go of my future plans, to stop trying to arrange it all. I'm not the Arranger in my story, God is. And, I need to let go of the person I am dating. I can't control him, and I shouldn't. It makes for a pretty awful & unsatisfying relationship.

Later on in Desire, Eldredge quotes Psalm 131:2 (NIV):

I have stilled and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

I have never understood the meaning of that scripture until today. Finally it's been made clear. Eldredge writes about the difference between a pilgrim & an arranger. A pilgrim is at peace with his desire, okay that it will remain unsatisfied while on the journey, willing to wait & hope & journey on to see what will happen. An arranger cannot be at peace with desire's unfulfilled state and so will try to secure something, anything that could satiate it if only for a moment. But that moment is fleeting, making the arranger grasp ever more ardently.

To help us determine what state our soul is in, Eldredge gives us these questions to ask:

What am I waiting for? Is there anything I ardently desire that I am doing nothing to secure?

To the second question, I would have to answer a very clear & weighty "no". But I am encouraged. God did not let me get too far before he hemmed me in & helped me to see my arranging. Thank you, Abba. And as a pilgrim who has walked longer than me, Eldredge says,

Things are different now. Now I wonder, What am I still arranging for? I should like to let it go too.

oh, Lord. Still and quiet my soul, in the way David talks about in the Psalm. Continue to teach & instruct my heart. When I begin to arrange & control & grasp for something other than you, hem me in, behind and before, and give me eyes to see the false god I am placing in front of You. Help me to live in the balance, to wait. To be as a pilgrim, steady in determination to follow after you, willing to accept the unsatisfied state of my desire without controlling, arranging, or losing heart altogether. But instead, make me as a pilgrim who hopes, waits, and looks forward to the day their desire will be fulfilled. That hope alone puts a pilgrim at rest. A pilgrim is not short-sighted. They have kingdom eyes. Cure my blindness. Give me kingdom eyes oh Lord. Give me kingdom eyes. In Jesus' name, amen.