Letting Go and Letting God

Interfaith Celebration Gathering

One of the life lessons that is presented to most of us over and over is the lesson of letting go. A quote that applies to some of us is “everything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it” meaning that it is tough for us to let go of people and situations when we feel responsible, or when we feel it is our duty to make things better, or when we just love someone so much we want to make things better for him or her.

One of the things it is toughest to let go of is control, or the illusion of control. We want to control things most when things seem most out of control. It is often hard to know when we have done enough and just need to let go and let God work in our stead.

While we are clinging so tightly to situations, though, God cannot find a way in to help us. We have to give up, to let go, in order for God to be able to work wonders and miracles or just to make things better.

This giving up and letting go for most of us feels like we are quitting when there just has to be something more we could do. We query ourselves over and over to figure out what it is we could do. We ask friends and relatives what else we can do. Sometimes we get suggestions, but most of the time we find out we have done all we could do in tough situations.

But the letting go does not mean we are giving up, no matter how much it may feel that way. It simply means we are surrendering to God. Surrendering to God means we are reaching out to God for help, knowing that the help will be forthcoming.

Surrendering to God means that we have finally learned who we are and who God is. We are souls on an earthly journey, with limited resources and a limited ability to affect the course of events in other people’s lives.

This means that we are responsible for doing our very best to help ourselves and others in any given situation, but when we reach the limits of our capacity to help, we need to turn the outcome over to God. We must not be hard on ourselves because we could not fix people or situations for that is not our job.

Our job is merely to love others and to do whatever is in our power to help them. Then we must let go and let God do the rest.

May the God of love add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN