Rest in the Will of God

When circumstances give us no peace, the heart must learn to receive peace from somewhere deeper.

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for Thou alone, O Lord, makest me dwell in safety.”

— Psalm 4:8

There comes a point in the spiritual life when we grow tired even of waiting.

We have prayed. We have tried to act honestly. We have surrendered what we thought God was asking us to surrender. We have allowed identities to be stripped away, plans to collapse, certainties to disappear. And still there comes another delay, another uncertainty, another door before which we must stand without knowing whether it will open.

The heart can grow very tired there.

It is possible even to become weary of being stripped.

The Fathers understood this. They did not speak of abandonment to God as though it rendered the soul insensible to pain. The desert was not peaceful because circumstances were peaceful. It was filled with hunger, temptation, loneliness, uncertainty and the long experience of God’s apparent silence. What made the desert a place of peace was that men and women gradually ceased demanding that the world give them what only God could give.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest meanings of hesychia.

Peace is not finally the arrangement of circumstances around our desires. It is the gathering of the heart into God when circumstances refuse to be gathered around us.

We want resolution. God gives Himself.

We want to know what will happen. God gives us this moment in which to love Him.

We want the road opened before us. He gives enough light to remain before Him today.

And sometimes He permits even good desires to remain unfulfilled for a time—not necessarily because the desires are wrong, but because He desires something still deeper than their fulfillment: the purification of the heart that desires them.

There is a terrible tenderness in this.

For eventually the prayer changes.

At first we say, Lord, show me Your will so that I may do it.

Later we begin to say, Lord, let Your will be done, even if I do not understand it.

And perhaps deeper still:

Lord, You Yourself are enough.

This is where prayer becomes indispensable.

Without prayer, uncertainty becomes rumination. Delay becomes frustration. Stripping becomes resentment. We begin constructing imaginary futures, defending ourselves against things that have not happened, rehearsing conversations, searching endlessly for some arrangement of circumstances that will finally permit us to rest.

But prayer calls the mind home.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

Again.

And again.

Not as an incantation by which we make difficulty disappear, but as a return to reality.

Christ is here.

Christ knows.

Christ sees what I cannot see.

Christ loves those whose decisions affect my life.

Christ is present in the waiting.

Christ is present in the stripping.

Christ is present even in this tired heart that has very little left to offer Him.

And perhaps that last poverty is itself a gift.

Purity of heart is not merely freedom from sinful thoughts. It is the gradual emergence of an undivided heart—a heart that no longer needs God and a particular outcome in order to be at peace.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

They shall see God.

Not necessarily explanations.

Not necessarily resolution.

Not necessarily the future.

God.

The great temptation in seasons of uncertainty is to believe that peace lies on the other side of the decision: When this is settled, then I will rest. When the answer comes, then I will be peaceful. When I finally know where I belong, then my heart can become still.

But the ascetical tradition tells us something far more demanding and far more beautiful.

The place of rest is here.

The hour of surrender is now.

If I cannot find Christ in the uncertainty, I may discover that even certainty cannot give me peace.

This does not mean becoming passive. There are things that must be said and decisions that eventually must be made. Conscience must be obeyed. Truth must be spoken. But once we have done what belongs to us, there comes a boundary beyond which our thoughts have no right to wander.

The rest belongs to God.

I am not Providence.

There are words that we repeat because we have mastered them, and there are words we repeat because God is slowly making them true within us. Perhaps this is one of the latter.

I am not Providence.

I do not have to arrange the end of the story.

I do not have to make another person understand.

I do not have to force open the door.

I do not have to preserve what God may ask me to lose.

I do not have to know what remains when the stripping is finished.

I must only remain before Him.

The old ascetics sometimes speak with a severity that initially frightens us: stay in your cell; remain; endure; do not flee from the place where God has permitted you to be tested. Yet beneath that severity lies extraordinary mercy. They knew how exhausting it is to seek rest by continually rearranging one’s circumstances.

The cell eventually teaches the monk:

You cannot run far enough to escape yourself, and you do not need to travel anywhere to find God.

Perhaps every Christian eventually discovers such a cell.

Sometimes it is illness.

Sometimes grief.

Sometimes responsibility for another person.

Sometimes uncertainty.

Sometimes it is simply a life that no longer resembles the life we imagined.

And there, if we remain, something very quiet can happen.

The demand that life explain itself begins to weaken.

Prayer becomes simpler.

The hands open.

The heart becomes poor.

And beneath the fatigue—sometimes very far beneath it—we discover a peace that did not come from circumstances because circumstances never gave us any.

It came from Christ.

There may still be heaviness. There may still be tears. There may even be moments when the heart says, Lord, I am tired of being stripped.

That prayer too can be offered.

Christ did not teach us surrender from a place untouched by anguish.

“Not my will, but Thine, be done” was spoken in Gethsemane.

The surrender of Christ was not serene because suffering had ceased. His sweat fell like blood. Yet within the anguish there remained an absolute handing over of Himself to the Father.

This is Christian peace at its deepest.

Not tranquility.

Not certainty.

Not control.

Communion.

The Son resting in the Father even while entering the darkness.

And perhaps this is what is asked of us in our smaller Gethsemanes: not that we feel peaceful, but that we remain turned toward the Father when peace cannot be felt.

Then even our weariness becomes prayer.

Father, I am tired.

I do not know what comes next.

I cannot carry tomorrow.

I cannot make Your will happen.

But I am here.

You are God.

I am Yours.

Let Your will be done.

And then silence.

Nothing more needs to be accomplished there.

The world may remain unsettled. Other people may still be deliberating. Doors may remain closed. The future may remain hidden.

But the heart can begin to rest because it has finally discovered where rest has always been:

not in knowing God’s will beforehand,

but in belonging to Him while it unfolds.