During my last year of college, I had so much to do and so
little time to do it that I would write down all my assignment dates on a
calendar and tape it to my wall. I called it my Semester Evacuation Plan. I do
not credit this with me making it through that last year; instead I give that
credit to the Hustle Prayer.
The Hustle Prayer was a prayer that I made up in college for
when things got really difficult and I didn’t feel like I had enough time in
the day to do everything that needed to be done. I would say, “LORD, Please
help me get done today what needs to get done. What doesn’t get done I trust
You that it didn’t need to get done today.” The thing that I noticed was that
on the days that I did not pray like this on my train ride to school, I was far
more stressed than on the days that I did pray this way. It wasn’t about the
words that I was saying, instead it was the change was in the attitude of my
heart and the invitation for God to come fill it that God responded to. The
days that I prayed the Hustle Prayer I was more intentionally relying on God’s
promises to take care of me instead of carrying that burden all by myself.
Recently the Hustle Prayer has been coming back into my mind
because sometimes I don’t feel like I have the energy or the focus to get all
of the things done. Earlier this week as I was praying it occurred to me: what
if I applied the Hustle Prayer not just to today, but to my whole life? To be
honest this was a scary thought. I have a lot of things that I would love to
do, or try, or learn, in this one lifetime that I have. At the same time a
large part of my relationship with Jesus has been when and how much do I submit
to his will for my life and how much do I rebel and try to do my own thing? (The
answer, of course, is that I should always submit to my loving Creator, but I
don’t always make wise choices.) So to trust God that the things that need to
happen in my life will happen and to trust that the things that do not happen did not need to happen is a very
uncomfortable Idea.
We love to think that if we try hard enough we can make some
value for ourselves. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who at some point
wasn’t trying to feel a sense of self-worth because of what they
accomplished. But do we really want to
live like that forever, in this world where we can’t even guarantee who will
live past tomorrow? It seems like a very difficult and unnecessary burden to
take on. I am all for trying things that are hard, but no matter what we
accomplish that feeling of self-worth eventually goes away and where are we
left? Jesus says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest.”[1] We
were designed to rely on the loving Designer and then everything else falls
into place. The easiest time to remember this is when you have more on your
plate than you think you can handle. The hardest time to live this out is when
you actually have to let go and trust that God is actually a loving Designer
and will not let you down.
I heard someone say once that engineers think: “I could lift
the world if you gave me somewhere to put the crane” meaning that the same laws
of Physics that apply to very small things also apply to very big things. What
if every day I committed to rely on my Creator for my full life plan the same
way I do for the days that seem so hard? How would that change the way I
anticipate the future?
