February 7, 2010
Surrender
Excerpt
from Luke 5: 5 - 6 "Master, we have worked all
night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down
the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their
nets were beginning to break.
Reflection by Anthony B.
Robinson
As life goes on, some words seem to change
their meanings, or acquire more or different meanings than they once
had. For me, it's been like that with the word "surrender."
"Surrender"
was always something to not do. "Stay in the game, don't give up, never
surrender." Like that. There's certainly a place for that. A place for
persistence. A time for tenacity. I sometimes observe that leaders
working for change in the life of a church give up too soon. You have to
be persistent.
But "surrender" has acquired another meaning that
is not negative, but positive. Like Peter in the Scripture story of
fishing all night long but catching nothing, I had been working very
hard for what seemed a long time and didn't have a blessed thing (that I
could see) to show for it. I was frustrated, angry and depressed. Very
slowly, I realized there was another meaning to surrender and that I
needed not to give up on the work, but to trust God more, to surrender
it to God, and to let God be God for me. Instead of insisting on the
outcomes I had in mind or the schedule I kept in my head, surrender to
God, as ridiculous as it sounded, was the only sane path.
A
friend likes to say, "When you're at the end of your rope, there's a
reason you're there, let go." That doesn't mean giving up. It means
remembering who's on first, and that it's not you (or me).
PrayerLord,
grant me the courage not to give up in the important battles, and the
grace to surrender to you. Amen.
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Subject: February 8, 2010 
