Put It Back Down

It seemed like the 100th time I was on my knees giving it back to God. I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and again turned it over to Him. Surrender is not a one and done deal, as much as we’d like it to be. It’s a continual and active decision. Our human instinct is to pick it back up after we’ve laid it at His feet, to check on it, make sure there’s nothing else for us to do, walk away, then run back and check just one more time.

Each time I picked it back up though, I didn’t feel any more at ease about it. It was still just as heavy as when I laid it down. And I had to wonder, God did you forget about it? Why haven’t you fixed this yet?

Then I heard Him whisper to my heart so gently, “Put it back down.”

So, for the 100th time in that adoration chapel, I surrendered it back to Him, so frustrated with myself for picking it back up in the first place, that in an act of determination I literally opened my hands toward the monstrance. And then it hit me- only once we make an act of surrender are we ready to receive.

It’s not a coincidence that the open-handed posture of surrendering is the same posture of receiving. They must coincide.

When my hands are closed, either together in prayer or clenching to a rosary, I am more concerned with the things I’m praying for than whom I’m praying to.

And when I forget whom I'm praying to, I'm less likely to trust the answer that I receive.

Confident surrender can only come from relationship with the living person of God.

When we pray in personal relationship, we know we can trust the outcome. We’re not trying to pick it back up again, because we trust the hands that are holding it.

Once we truly know His love for us, we know there’s no better place in the world for our prayers to be, than in His hands.

There is more to a relationship with God than just asking and receiving . There is also just knowing and loving- being known and being loved.

That’s what surrender does. It reorients our hearts from a God who just answers prayers to a God that is so in love with us, he wants NOTHING MORE than to answer our prayers, or give us something far greater.

Relationship must come first.

Then true surrender can follow.

“Put it back down,” He said. “Just rest in my love for now.”