Surrender
Jesus accepts powerlesness and allows himself to be nailed to the Cross. It is his final act of surrender. His hands are nailed in a final embrace of welcome and his feet are nailed in steadfast love. In the manner of the final laying down of his life lies his fullest expression of love.
Letting go and letting God is letting go to what is. This is the most excruciating part of the journey where everything seems to be lost and going in the wrong direction. It is where our dreams and hopes are dashed and the pain seems beyond endurance. At this point evil seems to have the upper hand and our cries of anguish seem to be falling on deaf ears.
Letting go and letting God is letting go of the way we want and think things need to go. It is acknowledging that our prayer and surrender is taking place within the very limited framework of our own understanding and that there is a much bigger picture. Rather than resisting whatever is happening it may be best to adopt an attitude of holy indifference even to the hammer blows of fate and fortune. To be in control of the situation and set our agenda is our natural inclination but when confronted with helplessness the illusion of being in control is shattered. And yet freedom remains not as to the blows themselves but whether to adapt an attitude of surrender and non-resistance. The words of the poem Invictus by Ernest Henley captures the essence of this kind of freedom:
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.