Carried Beyond Asking

A Colloquy When the Soul Learns to Rest in the Hands of God

Soul

In this mercy God help me by your grace. I am tired of standing on my own feet. I am tired of holding myself upright in your presence as if I knew where I was going. Carry me where you desire me to be. Let me be as a child in its mother’s arms without explanation or defense. Let me be as the infant lifted by the priest and borne to the altar. I do not know the way but I know the hands that lift me. I offer you my heart. Take it as a sacrifice of praise. Let it be for your glory alone.

God

You are not wrong to ask to be carried. You were never meant to walk this road alone. Before you learned to speak you were borne. Before you learned to choose you were held. This is not a regression but a return. Unless you become as a little child you will not enter the Kingdom because the Kingdom is entered by those who consent to be received.

You have labored long in prayer. You have brought words and tears and vigilance. You have guarded the altar of your heart and you have learned the cost of purity. But now you feel the weight of your own striving and you fear that even prayer may slip from your hands. Do not be afraid. What you sense is not loss but nearness.

When the priest lifts the child he does not ask the child to understand the altar. He does not wait for strength or comprehension. The child is carried through holy doors by another’s obedience. So it is now with you. You are being brought where your will cannot take you. Your task is no longer to move but to remain.

Prayer has led you to the gate. Let it rest there. The Master has come out to meet you. Do not speak. Do not reach. Let your heart be quiet. This silence is not emptiness. It is fullness that has no name.

You ask to offer your heart as a sacrifice of praise. This offering is not made by effort but by consent. A broken and humbled heart I will not despise. Lay it down without ornament or explanation. Do not shape it for Me. I receive it as it is.

When your mind grows still and your words fall away do not try to recover them. Beyond this boundary there is no asking because nothing is lacking. Beyond this boundary there is no movement because you are being borne. The Spirit governs now. You are not lost. You are hidden.

Remember what My servants have taught you. Prayer is the time of standing at the gate. But when the door opens the standing ceases. The child does not knock while being carried. He rests against the one who holds him.

Remain here. Let yourself be blessed again and again. You do not need to know where you are going. It is enough to know whose hands bear you.

Soul

Then take from me even the need to know that I am being carried. Take the comfort of awareness if it still belongs to me. Let me not watch myself resting in your hands. Let me simply rest. If prayer must fall silent let it do so without regret. If I must forget myself let it be as one who has found a home and no longer looks back. I place myself before you without claim or measure. Do with me what you will.

God

This is enough.

You need not descend further nor ascend higher. Where you are is where you have been led. Do not attempt to remain here by effort. Remaining is no longer your work.

When you no longer feel carried do not assume you have been set down. When you no longer hear My voice do not imagine absence. The deepest work is done where you cannot witness it.

As the child remembers nothing of the blessing yet bears it within his flesh so you will carry what you cannot recall. What is given here is not for experience but for transformation.

Now be still.