A Profitable Place To Be

If you have been living in a cave recently and have emerged to check your email, I’m glad you also took opportunity to stop by the TT blog today.  While you were arranging rocks in your cave the world’s financial structure has been falling apart.  I checked the headlines yesterday and saw that EU economic state is “worsening by the minute”.  My friend, David, in England knows he can come stay in my basement if it all goes under tomorrow. Most Americans will shrug off the international headlines because citizens of the good ol’ USA aren’t convinced that anything which occurs beyond our own shores has significance.  Adding to that ignorance is our consumption with our own economic woes and the verbal badminton going on between both parties in Congress about who is to blame and who is to remedy the dismal issues that are causing America to go broke.  Are there any proud pessimists out there who wish to stand up and declare that the sky is falling?  No takers today?  Well then, let me put something in your ear to think about:

May we cultivate a contentment that results in us becoming the Happily Helpless.  That’s going to be my new phrase.

“Hello, sir, how are you today?”

“Verily, verily I say unto thee, kind lady, that I am happily helpless.”

“Whatever do you mean, sir, with this characterization of yourself as being happily helpless?  I would hear more if you please.”

Well, since the imaginary blog lady has asked, let me take a run at explaining this.  Some things are within the scope of my ability today.  I’m wearing a purple and black checkered shirt with an open collar.  I picked it off the hanger, buttoned it up, tucked it in and have been please to be warmed by it.  I slipped on my shoes, put the keys in my car ignition, drove to my office, sat at my computer and commenced to blogging.  I was able to do all of that myself (please don’t send me comments about the reality that God has allowed all of this to come to pass otherwise I would have no ability at all).  Much of life is within our power to be actively involved.  We make decisions, employ our abilities, enjoy results and/or endure repercussions for things we have done in our own power.

But, truth be known, we are also severely limited in other areas of life.  There are simply some things we can do nothing about.  We are helpless.

I can’t make my friend from Blue Ridge be free from cancer.  I have no ability to awaken the heart of an unsaved acquaintance to the Gospel.  I’m unable to convince the wife who has abandoned her husband that she simply must go back home to him.  God has not entrusted me with the power to make my opponents recognize how adorable I really am.  Famines and fires and earthquakes and floods do not submit to me.  I don’t have a cure for male pattern baldness, or poverty or AIDS or chronic halitosis.  I can’t stop evil…quite frankly, I can’t even rid my own heart of it completely.  I’m unable to redo the past or control the future – redoing time is above my pay grade.  As for this global financial implosion? They don’t even want me checking coats at the meetings of the powers that be.  Hear me on this one:  concerning some things in life…

You are

100%

powerless

Now you can either be morose and pouty about this fact or do what God has called us to do instead.  We are commanded so many times in Scripture not to worry that you would think that Omniscience believes anxiety to be an issue with humans.  Fear not, be not afraid, fret not thyself because of evildoers, take no thought for the morrow, be anxious for nothing…the imperatives keep lining up.  I suggest to you today that we should coin the term Happily Helpless to describe ourselves.  The core question is this: can you and I be happy in Jesus when we are not the ones in charge of so much in life?  When you hear the word helpless you don’t typically attach the word happy.  The tension of our faith, I believe, requires us to do exactly that.  Much more than a stoic, fatalistic admission of your limitations, this declaration preaches that you can be helpless AND happy.  How can this be?

Because you are owned by the One who actually is in control of everything.  He has loved you with an everlasting love.  He has pledged Himself to your inevitable good.  He has secured you for all of eternity and will deliver you safely on that other shore at a time appointed.  He makes the bad in Christians’ lives bow at the feet of the good, making the bad the eventual, submissive servant.  While making sure you arrive safely in Heaven’s harbor, God has unconditionally forbidden that any of your helplessness (happy or otherwise) can follow you there.  So, again, we import Heaven’s confidence into earth’s instability and find ourselves substantially comforted, content and confident.

In a world that offers little to evoke your smile, maybe today by faith you can let the fact that you are helpless bring about a countenance of rest and peace.  Happily Helpless is a profitable place to be.  Do you think…maybe…that’s why He keeps leaving us there?