04/19/2021
By Pastor Vinnie Cappetta
"Entrusted to Better and Stronger Hands"
The other day I was trying to help someone with their emotional life. I encountered quite a bit of resistance from the person. They had concerns about a great many things and I did the best I could to try to address those concerns. After we finished the conversation, I reflected on it and wondered if I needed to give up on trying to help this person. I began to wonder if perhaps I was not the right person to help them. I came face to face with my limitations in trying to help someone who didn’t seem to want my help.
Then I read these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer…“As long as we ourselves are trying to help shape someone else’s destiny, we are never quite free of the question whether what we are doing is really for the other person’s benefit – at least in any matter of great importance. But when all possibility of cooperating in anything is suddenly cut off, then behind any anxiety about him there is the consciousness that his life has now been placed wholly in better and stronger hands... the greatest task…maybe to entrust each other to those hands.” Letters and Papers from Prison, page 102-103
I had to place the situation into God’s hands and acknowledge that I could not do anything without Him. I needed to “let go and let God.” I did that and the amazing thing is that the next conversation with the person was night and day different. I was open to everything they had said to me previously and they were open to everything that I had said to them.
I wonder if you are trying to shape someone’s destiny. I wonder if you are doing what you are doing for their benefit or for some other reason. Are you doing what you are doing for God’s glory? Maybe it is time to place that person wholly into better and stronger hands.
