I once saw (okay, I think I actually trice saw...but that isn't important) a Rob Bell video called "Shells." I only have vague memories of how it specifically went, but I remember the jist (okay, a friend reminded me of the jist earlier today...but that isn't important either). It went something like this...
A boy is walking along the beach collecting shells. He is happy and enjoys what he has found, but they are nothing magnificent. None of the shells are big and many are merely broken fragments. Suddenly, he sees it. A full and beautiful shell floating out in the ocean. His father encourages him to go get it. He tries to get out to it, but keeps stopping short and returning to the shore. With more encouragement, he makes it out to the shell, but he doesn't grab it. He comes back to the shore and his father who asks what happened. The boy explained that he couldn't get the full and beautiful shell. The father asked why, and the boy responded, "My hands are full of shells."
How often is this us? We cling so tightly to the things around us that we can't grasp the better things God has for us. We are unwilling to let go of the comfort of the life we've created and grown accustomed to.
I've realized in the past few days I don't really and truly surrender. When I trust and hope in a future that God has planned for me, I always focus on some possible way that it will work out. I surrender to a possibility - one that might make me slightly uncomfortable, but with which I am ultimately okay.
I don't surrender to an unknown. I don't surrender to a future full of hope and happiness that I cannot imagine for myself. I surrender only insofar as I can understand.
That isn't real surrender.
Real surrender embraces the darkness. Real surrender trusts the God whose plans I cannot see and desires those plans in my life. No. Matter. What.
That's the hard part: joyful surrender to what appears to be a dark abyss, while trusting and hoping and delighting in God's promise.
After all, if my hands are full of my own comforting visions, how will ever grasp what is actually better?
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