Being Helpless

It was a lovely shot. Maybe the best one I made all day on the golf course. A little pitching wedge hit over a large mound and traversing the length of the green ending up less than three feet from the hole. A lovely shot. I wish I had seen it. After swinging I hit the ground. After paying a lot of money to play this lovely and challenging course, I was on the ground at the ninth hole, a victim of my back going out. What a way to spend a sabbatical. Expensive, too. The pain was so great that by the next day I was limping into the chiropractors office. At least he got me walking a little better. But I have spent two days not going anywhere but on the couch feeling helpless.

Helplessness is a most interesting feeling. You cannot do for yourself. You are dependent upon others. Even the basic actions of life, any movement whatsoever, becomes all consuming. Looking to be free of pain becomes more important than food or sleep. Nothing you do can change the condition your in. You are at the mercy of the physical effects that have the control. You are helpless.

I am not sure that God desires that we be helpless. It is not the natural state of humankind. I am learning afresh and anew the difference between being helpless and being dependent. Being dependent on others or on God is very different than being helpless. My dependence on God is a joy to Him precisely because I am not helpless - I have a will and can exercise it even in rejecting God's will and plan for my life. To be dependent, then, is a choice I make concerning the love and respect I have for God and His will for my life. When I am tempted to follow my own way, it is my dependence on God that wins the day rather than my helplessness toward the nature of sin.

I am learning to be dependent. As a matter of fact, I have always been learning dependency. I am dependent on my wife, my family and friends, upon a whole host of things that allow me to do the things I want and need to do (like this computer that I am typing into). Being dependent is not something you are as a child and lose when you become an adult. The secret to being a mature adult may very well lie in knowing how to be dependently independent. If that seems like a contradiction in terms than I would suggest you think about it a little more. It is precisely what we all need to learn.

Jesus was not helpless on the Cross. He was depending on God to accomplish in Him what could change mankind. The Holy Spirit is not helpless in accomplishing the work of the Lord in the world but when we are dependent on Him to fill us and use us, then the Will of God is done. God is not helpless. He chooses to depend on us to be His instruments to change a lost and dying world. There is a difference between being helpless and dependent. Thank God. I'll sign off now, my back hurts and I am depending on God for help.