I remember one summer in France, Lisa bringing me a small bowl with cut up strawberries. “You’ve gotta try these,” she says. I take a bite and am transformed. “What did you put on these?” “Nothing”, she said. “These were grown by the lady down the street." She explained that the strawberries we normally eat aren’t really ripe. "Strawberries are hard to handle when they are fully ripe and soft, so commercial farmers pick them early with machines and then spray a chemical in the delivery truck that trick the strawberries into thinking they are ripe and ready to turn red. God has always intended strawberries to taste like this, but we just aren’t patient enough to grow them the way He intended.”
I don’t have much of a New Year’s resolution list. They always seem a bit silly and I’m usually disappointed by March that it didn’t stick. This year I’m going to try and focus on something more essential. Something that I believe God is calling me to resolve. It’s the concept of striving versus abiding.
John Ch. 15 v 4-5 “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them, provide much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing.”
The definition of abide means to remain stable or in a fixed state. In Hebrew it means to dwell or to encamp. In Greek it means just to remain, or just to be where you are rooted. Striving means to struggle in opposition. There is an obstacle you need to overcome. I think if I look back at the stress and anxiety I experience in life, it points to this issue I have with constantly striving rather than abiding. When we abide, we are trusting who God is and who we are in him. When we are striving, we are hustling and struggling for our worth. We are trying to prove who we are by what we do, rather than our true identity.
I was convinced at a young age that I need to be self-reliant and to produce results. That is where my value comes from. I take pride in the fact that I can handle it. I don’t need help. When someone needs something to get done, they come to me. Everything I need in life comes from my own sweat and effort. The problem with this mind set is that it is exhausting, and false. This idea that the harder I work, the more successful I will be, has me focusing me on myself rather than on God. Looking back for so long I think “abiding” felt lazy and "striving" felt productive. When the results are up to me, I have control. The problem is, I never asked God what He wants me to do. I got so good at knocking down doors, I never stopped to ask why they were closed in the first place. God had opened the doors he wanted me to gently walk through, but I never looked up to see. I think in the end, it’s a trust issue. I don’t really believe that God will come through for me, so I'm going to do it myself. Only now, after so much effort, I'm starting to see that He does come through for me, and that His plans were better than mine all along.
St. Augustine says God never stops trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them. When I’m striving, and my identity is in my business or success, my hands are full and I’m not looking to God to provide for me. I look at my 9 month old grandson. He is so easy to love. Everyone delights in being around him and yet, he doesn’t do anything to “earn” that love. That adoring happens just because of who he is, not because of his productivity. I wish I still felt like that. I wonder if we all stopped striving so much if we would be easier to love.
God doesn't want me to give up my grit or work ethic. I just think he wants to transform it - to have it united with His will and purposes rather than mine. He wants my hands to be open to get to work with His plans for me. It will take a serious mind shift since it goes against everything I was taught. I remember reading:
"The helping hand you need is at the end of your own right arm." - Winston Churchill
That quote always sounded so strong and self reliant to me and was an anthem to a successful life. Now that I'm a bit older, I think that God really isn’t looking for performers - He is looking for farmers. He wants me to get my hands dirty, till the soil, trust for Him to provide the sun and the rain, and produce results together. I’m so focused on productivity that I forgot about fruitfulness. The world tells me to be productive, but now I know that if I rush to get things done too quickly, without discerning God's will, the fruits of my labor will be out of season and have no taste. I harvest a lot of white strawberries.
There is a rhythm of life. There is a current that I need to flow with, not against. God is offering me an easy yoke, yet I find myself swimming upstream, striving harder and harder, proud of my exhaustion, even though utlimatley I'm not getting where I want to go.
One of my best friends is facing a divorce that he doesn’t want. He, like me, was trained in the business world to tackle a project, "Put yourself fully into it and find a way to get it done". So he did that with his marriage. He figured out what he thought was wrong, made a list of things to do, doubled down on the discipline to be flawless, and checked every box. “Ben, I’m not going to fail here. I’ve looked at it from every angle. I know where I need to improve as a husband and am knocking that out. I think if I write her a letter, crafted just the right way and show her all that I’ve removed all of the problems, she will come back.” And he did it. Full throttle. Problem was, it wasn’t working. The harder he tried, the more it seemed like she pulled away. I shared with him this idea of abiding instead of striving. Maybe the lesson for him here was not to try and fix this on his own through hard work and dedication. Maybe this time, he doesn’t have what it takes to put the pieces back together. Maybe now what is really needed is surrender.
I got this note from him the other day. “I don’t know what the outcome will be for our marriage but I do know I have given it to GOD and whatever the outcome, it will be what is best. I also know I will be just fine and will continue to lead a blessed life with or without her and so will she. I am confident also that my daughter and I will grow even closer in our special bond through this journey and will without question, be walking it side by side with Him.”
Ahhh, now that is trusting God - such beautiful surrender. That text was sweeter than a bowl of French strawberries….
