“O Lord, My Rock”

A Personal Reflection on the Abandonment of Discernment

There are moments in life when the familiar scaffolding of identity is stripped away. Titles loosen their grip. Roles fall silent. What once steadied the heart no longer provides clarity. And suddenly one stands where one had not planned to stand, with no chart, no map, only the bare ground under one’s feet.

I used to think discernment was a kind of spiritual compass, a way to gain a sense of direction, to understand what God wanted so that I could walk toward it responsibly. Now I see that true discernment begins only when all such self-assuredness dies.

In seminary we prayed

“Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

We said it before opening the Fathers, as if to remind ourselves that understanding is not born of intelligence but of grace.

When I first read Cassian, his counsel for constant prayer struck me with the same force:

“O God come to my assistance. O Lord make haste to help me.”

Not a scholarly prayer. Not a sophisticated one. A cry. A plea. A hand reaching upward out of weakness.

In time even that plea gave way to something still simpler:

“Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner.”

The prayer that is not many words but one wound, the cry of a heart that knows it cannot govern itself.

All of this is teaching me that discernment is not an act of spiritual analysis but an act of surrender. It is not clarity born of competence. It is clarity born of crucifixion.

The ego longs to calculate.

The heart that is dying to self longs only to cry out.

Discernment is the fruit of that death.

The Fathers say again and again that humility is the soil in which wisdom grows. Abba Anthony said, “Expect temptations to the last breath.” And with them, I would add, expect uncertainty to the last breath. Because God is not sought by sight. God is sought by trust. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” This is not poetry but commandment.

Discernment begins when we stop demanding answers from God and begin instead to acknowledge the truth of our own nothingness. This is the slaying of the ego the Desert Fathers speak about. Saint Isaac the Syrian teaches that to see one’s own sins is a greater miracle than raising the dead. Saint Sophrony tells us that every genuine spiritual step is marked by abasement. And the Fathers remind us that the one who truly knows his weakness becomes the place where the power of God is revealed.

So perhaps the greatest discernment is simply this:

to let go of the need to determine the path

and to cling instead to the One who is the path.

To abandon discernment does not mean to cease praying. It means to cease controlling. It means to place one’s forehead against the earth and whisper, “Lord, I am nothing. You are everything. If You do not guide me, I will not move.” It means to accept the darkness not as danger but as a veil. A veil that hides only one thing: my own desire to walk by sight rather than by faith.

“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

I repeat this not to escape the uncertainty but to be anchored within it.

For the Rock does not appear when clarity comes.

The Rock appears when everything else falls away.

I find myself now standing on that Rock, stripped of old securities, stripped of old identities, holding only to the Name of the Lord as to a lifeline. And with each breath the prayer rises:

Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner.

Lord come to my assistance.

Lord make haste to help me.

My help is in Your Name.

My life is in Your hands.

Not my will but Yours.

And in this surrender, in this little death of the ego, discernment is born. Not as certainty, not as a light shining down the entire road, but as a quiet assurance that the next step will be shown when the time comes.

The Fathers knew what we are only beginning to learn:

that the path is revealed not to the strong

but to those who fall on the Rock

and are broken

and therefore are finally free to be led.