The Quiet Well - Blogs



Open Handed

I have been saying something to myself lately. And now I find myself saying it to others — more of us need to hear it, say it and internalise it.

Hold things lightly.

This is not a suggestion to hold things carelessly, or without conviction, or without a plan, passion and dedication. Holding something lightly is not the same as not caring about it. I want to be clear about that from the start. It means something more specific, and more difficult. It means staying devoted, determined, faithful yet releasing your grip on exactly how it has to happen.

I have learned this slowly, over time, mostly through the places where I held on too tightly and felt what that costs.

Someone will tell you: pick a vision, set a destination, do everything in your power to move toward it. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. 

The trouble comes when the vision shifts from something you are pursuing to something you are controlling. 

When the grip tightens until you are convinced it is entirely in your doing, your timing, your method, your sequence of decisions, and if you sleep too long you might miss it, if you move too slowly it might pass, if you do not do that exact thing in that precise moment, everything falls apart.

I have been there. Wound up, anxious, circling because it was not working in the timing I had wanted, in the way I had decided it must.

Psalm 37 verse 5 stopped me. The Message translation goes:

"Open up before God, keep nothing back; 

he'll do whatever needs to be done."

Not direct it. Not manage it carefully from a distance. Open up. Keep nothing back. Give it and leave it.

When I look back across twenty years, I can no longer recognise the destination I thought I was moving toward. I am nowhere near where I thought I would be. And I mean that as one of the most honest gifts I have ever been given because if I had remained tightfisted about the path, about the outcome, about the precise shape my life needed to take, I would not be here. And I do not know what I would have lost in the holding.

Not to abandon the vision. Not to stop showing up faithfully. But to release the how. To trust the path more than the plan. To lean into God's leading rather than our own engineering of the outcome.

And when I think about everything the hand has already been through, held when it was reaching, steadied when it was falling, strengthened and sent out to do faithful work in rooms that did not always make space for it, I realise something.

A hand that has been through all of that does not need to grip so tightly anymore. It has already learned the most important thing. It is not alone. It has never been alone.

It has enough. It is enough. It can open.

And the work those open hands carry, quietly and faithfully, shall be rewarded.

In prayer recently, I find that I open my hands, literally, physically open it, and let it go. Let Him have His way. Let God take control.

That is what holding lightly looks like. Not empty hands. Open ones.

Let us Pray

Father,

We come to you with open hands.

Everything we have held too tightly, every outcome we have tried to engineer, every grip we have refused to loosen — we lay it down. We place it in your hands, the hands that have held us all along.

We trust you with all our hearts. We lean not on our own understanding. In all our ways, we acknowledge you.

Whether we need to be steadied, carried, or simply held today — we trust you to give us what we need, exactly when we need it.

We ask for a conscious awareness of your presence. For peace to guard our hearts. For rest to anchor our souls. For the courage to keep our hands open.

In Jesus' name. Amen.