Learning How to be Helpless

“We’re never good at being helpless. We plot and plan to avoid a moment when we can’t do anything to change our circumstances. Our culture celebrates a trinity of preparation, risk and effort—all to make unnecessary what Jesus calls essential. And so the grace Christ offers us is always countercultural, against-the-grain: it calls us to a frank acknowledgement of weakness most have sworn to never speak. Don’t be surprised that giving up control is harder than the hardest task: grace contradicts the habits time has taught us. ‘Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling.’ Learning grace—like the holiness to which it leads—is also the work of a lifetime. So stay in grace.”