Our Whole Bodies
Surrender ultimately is an act of hope
It has been nearly three weeks since Zoë Dawn came into our world. She is near perfect at this stage; soft and simple, requiring little and doing even less. Her hair is soft and golden and we all caress it as though she were our little pet bunny. We coo at her toes and sigh at her pouty, rosebud lips. We pass her around and hold nothing against her. She is all fresh starts and new beginnings.
A newborn baby will for me always be a miracle. And even though her birth did not defy natural law, she like each of my children has brought some unforeseen expansion into our lives, one we didn’t know we needed. Zoë Dawn, rightly translated, could be life breaking through on the horizon. What is life breaking though on the horizon— the dawn of a new day— if it is not hope?
A friend sent me this article in the NY Times about how having a baby during the pandemic is an act of hope. The article tries to define that hope in more secular terms, but still comes around to a sort of nebulous explanation of how it operates in our lives. It seems as though real hope is difficult to maintain without transcendence.
I’ve been thinking about this act of hope, this clinging to the promises of God, and how it fleshes itself out in our very fleshly bodies. There are a lot of things that battle against hope in my life. I assume there are in yours too. While we have the hope of heaven written on our hearts, we walk every day in the valley of the shadow of death, and it dims our view considerably and makes having hope— hard.
One thing having Zoë reminds me of is that the hopeful act of bringing her into the world also requires a sacrifice on my part. In some ways, it means handing over the rights to my entire body so that she can live and prosper. Part of this is easy. I don’t really mind getting up at night to feed her. The slowed pace of my days is not entirely unwelcome. I don’t really love the extra weight and exponentially increased effort to shed it because of my age, but I haven’t lost my ability to walk or any other major body functions. Still, there is a significant loss of autonomy. If I want to care for her rightly, I have to give myself physically every day in large portions of time and effort. Beyond the physical sacrifices, there is an existential reality of loss any time we love someone. With all of my children, I have to know they ultimately do not belong to me. While I have more invested in them emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and physically than any other relationships outside our family, I have to put all that on the altar and know I hold no rights or demands on who they become or what happens to them.
This is the part of hope that scares me. It is also the only way to be transformable putty in the hands of God. When we offer ourselves— everything from our bodies, to our dreams and fears and needs and failures— as a daily surrender to God, this is where he works.
I know that my surrender might require loss at first. It might require that I apologize, or address my pride. It might require that I say no to doing or buying something I want. It might mean changing a behavior or confessing a sin. It might mean being faithful in something I feel bad at. And at times it will also mean seeing God work. Or watching him provide. Or experiencing inexplicable peace. Or just being filled with the life-giving presence of Christ.
Our acts of hope are also acts of surrender.
I find it intriguing and not a little comforting that the Apostle Paul tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God as our act of whole-life, authentic worship when he knows how ridden we are with selfishness. D.L. Moody famously said, “the problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar.” I feel this way as I think about the ways in which God seems to continually push me to offer myself fully in surrender to him. I put myself up there but then come right back down. I worry that I will be trampled. Or merely burned alive and left with ashes. Dramatic, yes. But it’s a fear I think many of us have.
Yet, time and again I am shown that Jesus himself did this for me in all the ways I fail to do it for him. Therein lies the grace and confidence I need to stand up and place myself on the altar again. To surrender myself in so many acts of hope— hope in a good God who is at work in us and in the world.
Esau McCauley had poignant words today about how we can struggle through this world with both acts of hope and lament as we live under the arc of God’s active presence. “Resistance in a seemingly impossible scenario is a deep act of faith. It is a belief that God is not limited by our insufficiency, but perhaps might even be glorified through using limited human instruments for his purposes.” Whether in spite of my own failure or the failures of others, or society at large, we can continue to offer ourselves daily and have hope that it is not for naught.
For this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is Thy faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:21-23
Off the Shelf: reading that is inspiring hope and surrender and the love of a good novel
Truly the Community: Romans 12 and How to Be the Church. by Marva Dawn.
So many books coming out (like Francis Chan’s latest) about the church and unity, but sometimes older voices are as good or better than the latest hot off the press. I have this one on my shelf so have been using it rather than buying something new.
New and Selected Poems. by Mary Oliver
Reading one poem a day, just to soak in the beauty of language and the pictures she paints at times that have layers of meaning— pointing me to ways of thinking I couldn’t express otherwise. Yesterday, “Waterfall” somehow connected to the experience of offering one’s body as a living sacrifice. The “unexpected kindness” of a free-fall. What I imagine total surrender could be like.
Peace Like a River. by Leif Enger.
Re-reading for pleasure. Miracles floating around in an everyday world of hard existence and faithful characters and the irresistible charm of Swede.