Leave the Rest to God
“Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” —PSALM 25:5 (NIV)
The Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Church of England) Justin Welby was speaking about all that overwhelms a person’s work in the world. He had just visited a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Ebola crisis, where people were unable to get food or medical help because of militia fighting. Some had been rescued, but 12,000 had been left behind because they were too sick to be moved. All he could do was comfort one person at a time. In the face of such overwhelming suffering, Justin lamented to his co-worker that he could do so little and asked, “What do you do? How do you cope with the weight of all this?” His friend replied, “Do what you can. Leave the rest to God.”
“Your job is to do what you can with the resources God has given you,” Justin explained. “And if that’s very little indeed, it’s very little indeed.” When he came to the edges of what is possible, he turned to the psalms of lament and protest as a way of handing all that cannot be solved by one person over to God.
God is in the process of redeeming the whole world. And as we wait, our prayers might sound something like this: God, I’m not sure what is happening, or why it’s taking so long, or how I can make any difference. Show me what is mine to do. And hurry up on all the rest. To be able to pray this way is to discover a kind of mental, physical, and emotional settling within ourselves. It’s a balance-point where we realize what is ours to be done with human-sized effort. And we stay hopeful about what God is doing even if we can’t see it yet.
REFLECT
1. Think about all the things you are passionate about or worried about happening in your life or in the world right now. Write them down on a piece of paper. Take a second to pray over this list. Place a checkmark next to the problems, situations, and worries on this list that are out of your control. Those are the things you can give to God, for now (one day God might show you a way that you can help).
2. Think about the things that keep you up worrying at night or that weigh on your heart. On a scale of 1-10, how hard is it for you to trust God with the redemption of the world?
RESPOND
Take a minute to reflect on something you did not check off your list. How can you make a difference or do something about it today (even if it is a human-sized difference)? How can you offer God’s love, grace, and compassion to make these problems a little bit better, even just for today? Let it be your goal to “Do what you can. Leave the rest to God.”
A Blessing for Our Restless Hearts
God, we bless the starlight that is Advent, the goodness that is coming, but is not-yet.
We bless the longing that we feel here in the in-between.
Bless the stirrings, the restlessness because so much is imperfectable, unfinishable.
We bless our unknowing, our agreeing to let the world be the world.
We bless the steadiness of your gaze upon us for you see us as we are, and as we were always meant to be.
You are the mirror held before us, the love by which we see.
GOING DEEPER
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, shares that we can all do small acts of love, and it is okay when we get angry that it doesn’t feel like enough. Watch this clip to hear the whole story of his visit to the refugee camp from the conversation,“Suspicious of Joy” (9 minutes).