Open Hands · Week 1 · Saturday · STRESS
We started the week at the river. You know what the line for the whole week has been walking toward?
The sun rose above him as he passed by Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.Genesis 32:31 (BSB)
He got the new name. He got the blessing he refused to let go without. And then he walked out into the morning limping, and as far as the text ever tells us, he limped for the rest of his life.
The sun rising is in that sentence too. Both things are true in the same breath, and Scripture does not rank them for us or tell us which one to feel about it.
What This Week Cost Me
I turned something down recently.
Good work, people I like and would have enjoyed working alongside, money I could have used. It was outside the thing I am actually good at, and I have known about myself for a long time that I take those anyway — that I can talk myself into almost anything if the ask arrives with enough respect attached to it. Usually I am ok taking on things outside of my comfort zone because I like to learn and grow (good and bad at the same time, because when does it end?)
I would like to report that I have peace about it. What I actually have is a gap in the calendar I do not enjoy looking at, and a number I have recalculated more times this week than I want to admit.
The strain of reaching becomes the strain of not reaching.
That is the honest version, and I am saying it plainly because the dishonest version does real damage. Staying inside what God assigned you is not a technique that removes the pressure. It moves it. You stop straining toward the thing and you start straining against the wanting of it, and the second one is quieter but it is not nothing.
Five people this week and every one of them paid something. A girl gave up the thing she was best at. A man gave up a contract. A manager let two mistakes go out with her name attached. A young man gave up the only levers he had. A grandfather said no to something genuinely good and watched them replace him in a week.
None of them got a tidy resolution by Friday. That is not a flaw in the stories. That is what it costs.
The Only Instruction I Have
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me, put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.Philippians 4:9 (BSB)
Put it into practice. Not understand it, not agree with it, not find it moving on a Saturday morning. Practice is what you do again after the first time it costs you something, which is precisely where most of us stop.
So here is the one I am carrying into next week, and it is small enough to actually do: before I say yes to anything, ask whether it is inside what I was given, or whether I am reaching.
I am not good at this. I have a gap in my calendar and a number I keep checking.
But the sun came up, and I am still here, and I am walking a little differently than I was on Monday.
Open Hands · Week 1 Complete · The series continues
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