Open Eyed Asking

This week I read these words from prayer app Lectio365:

“Abba , Father… everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.” Mark 14:36a (NIV UK)

I ask you for a miracle.

“Yet not my will, but yours be done.” Luke 22:42b (NIV UK)

I relinquish control.

I sat with these words for a while, texting them to my still sleeping husband, writing them in my journal, turning them over in my mind as I considered them from various angles.

We ask for a miracle. We also relinquish control.

How do I ask wholeheartedly, and continue asking in faith (I’m thinking here of Christ’s parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18), and yet, simultaneously, with untainted trust in God’s goodness and sovereignty, leave it fully in God’s hands?

How do I do that, especially, when I am not Christ, but just myself: small, fearful, uncertain?

I wonder if there is no way to do that but to sit in the uncomfortable place of paradox, holding these two seemingly opposing truths simultaneously: the asking of the miracle and the relinquishing of control.

But as I look at it further, I see that the request for miraculous intervention is, in and of itself, a relinquishment of control. It’s saying, “God, this situation is far beyond anything I can fix. I need you to step in. I need you to do more than I can ask or imagine.”

And then what? Then we acknowledge that God can say no. And we learn to be content with the fact that he sees more and knows more and understands more than we can with our limited human perspective.

And that is not easy. Because in order to do either part of this equation—asking for help or giving up the illusion of control—we first have to see ourselves and God clearly.

We don’t ask for help if we haven’t first come to the end of ourselves. We don’t ask for help if we can’t see that God is infinitely more capable. We don’t ask for help if we can’t acknowledge the depth of our need and the endless well of his goodness and power.

But we can’t let go of our imagined control of the situation if we also don’t see, first, how laughable it is to think that we control much at all.

And we can’t be content with that acceptance until we see God for who he truly is: powerful, even when it seems that he is not acting; good, even when we cannot understand what he is allowing; loving, even when we feel far from his presence.

And we can’t see God for who he truly is until we first allow ourselves to be cut to the core by Christ—dangling from the nails that ripped through skin and sinew, bloodied, beaten, gasping for breath—and then allow ourselves to be stitched back together by the hope of his empty tomb.

Today, I am asking for open eyes so that I can pray honestly:

Lord, I need a miracle. And I relinquish control.