To Do The Things We Can't Do

Good Saturday to you in Christ Jesus! One day in the hospital many years ago, I got into some odd mind set where I stuffed my mouth full of bread. For some reason, I thought in the moment that I had to get it all in. Of course, my mouth dried up from all the bread and I could neither chew nor swallow the big lump. Now, back in my youth I was told many times that I could do anything I set my mind to accomplish. Wrong, I had to reach up and get enough bread out of my mouth to keep from choking and gagging on the stuff. At the time, dealing with two long-arm casts, this was no easy task. For some hours afterward, I wondered at my foolishness and at the source from where that peculiar idea arrived in my mind. To this day I do not have a definitive answer.

Whatever the rah-rah boys may say, the spirit within me is full of grand or mundane ideas, but the flesh it lives in right now can only perform a much more limited repertoire. I can play the piano some, but I haven't practiced or had a lesson for almost 40 years, so I cannot play the piano well. I have never played a violin, so it can be said that I cannot play the violin at all. I could set my mind to practice and train at either skill, but the chances of virtuosity arriving in the time I have left on this earth is not great. However, there are other things that I have no chance of doing on my own, no matter how much I set my mind on it.

I cannot, for example, reach into another person's body and heal them. Reaching my hands into another body, or even my own, is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Surgeons need cutting tools and years of training in anatomy to perfect their skill. Even those professionals don't just reach in and move stuff about like a big Lego set. The human body doesn't work that way. I cannot step in front of a speeding truck and stop it. The truck would stop me in a rather permanent way. Setting my mind on stopping the truck's momentum would make little difference in the forward velocity of the thing. I am so powerless in so many ways...but I'm okay with that.

You see, to do the things we can't do, we must come to a higher power. That term has been used tritely, and vaguely, and in many other wrong ways in this world. However, Jesus is a higher power, and His power is effective, wise, gentle, and unstoppable. I have access to my higher power through faith and prayer. Jesus may answer in the negative, because what I asked is not good for me. Jesus may work what I ask through another person. Jesus may tell me 'not yet'. Jesus may accomplish what I asked in His way and not involve me at all. Or, Jesus may work in me and through me to accomplish His good purpose and for the glory of God the Father. Don't give up on faith and prayer in our Lord Jesus; it is how we do the things we cannot do!

God's great love to you,
Bucky