Listing the Let Goes

The Lord, through Isaiah:

“From this time forward I make you hear new things,

hidden things that you have not known.”

~Isaiah 48:6b-c (NRSV)

As a form of recent reminder, the portion of a message and a good word in any season, there is a necessity to let go of the things that continue, or presently, hold us.

Upon this our salvation rests—the experience of salvation; the knowledge of it and the skill of retrieval. Letting go is the practice of passing to the Lord all manner of things that have kept us captive ‘til, and including, the present moment. Unreconciled, they may menace our future.

Only we, within the scope of decent introspection, can know what these things are to let go of. Letting go may even be the testimony of redemption rather than the implored declaration of ongoing suffering.

Now To Get Motivated

What we may need, however perplexing, is reason to get started—we may know within our intellects that letting go is the best thing, but getting to work is another thing entirely.

We human beings hold onto a lot of things—habits, attitudes, experiences, resentments, pride, dead memories, comforts, paralysing fears, guilt and shame, to name but a few—and these things will corrode away at our spirits if we, alone, let them. They will make us worse off. Held almost to ransom, at any time they take us plummeting into an abyss-of-thought and further from God.

At the bequest of honesty, a plain pattern of thinking that draws us to account, we reel off these ‘let goes’, and just putting them down on paper is a salvific, cathartic experience. How much better to make it a daily practice through prayer?

These things are a dirge of burden we can no longer bear if we have our own best interests at heart... and why wouldn’t we? Why is it that we go off at a spark of notice to help someone else with their stuff and neglect our own?

No, today is a day—like any other—where honesty and courage and hope for release can prevail; and tomorrow, too.

All we will ask ourselves to do is make a simple list and reflect over it; God will guide the rest.

Getting To Work

The fact of the list is letters and words and sentences before the eyes.

These letters and words and sentences in bullet points form for us, meaning, and meaning holds gentle sway in our hearts—and it is at that level that change might slowly be borne. Such change may not actually be difficult; we are letting go after all; letting go of the tension, weighing anchor and setting sail from those injudicious calamities that have imprisoned us, however little or large they are or have been.

Getting to work begins with a promise to ourselves: to enter into a voyage with faith at the helm. Rough seas there may be, but the destined land we shall eventually reach if we continue charting our course.

***

Our biggest problems are the things we hold onto. We can let go of these anytime; God has promised to help us. Letting go is a universal and constant human need. There is no shame in it; only liberation of spirit. Claim freedom: let go.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.