Abandonement

In today’s reading Henri Nouwen quotes Charles de Foucauld’s prayer of abandonment. He prays, “…I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve and with boundless confidence.” What a beautiful way to describe the central ambition of the Christian life! Our surrender into God’s hands must be without reserve and with boundless confidence, or it is no surrender at all. As Paul admonishes us, we must consider ourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom.6:11). One cannot die while reserving some life. Death is complete, final, irreversible. And so should our abandonment into God’s hands be. Except that we surrender ourselves with boundless confidence that we will find life in God. And not just any life but a life that is authentic and meaningful. It is the kind of life that makes death excusable and worthwhile. I pray that the Holy Spirit will cultivate this holy ambition in my heart to abandon myself into God’s hands without reserve and with boundless confidence.