As I walk with my walker, I sometimes notice my palms are red from holding the handles too tightly, gripping it for safety and security. But I realize that neither safety nor security depends on the intensity of my grip. Instead, I am safe and secure for reasons completely unrelated to my own efforts and determination. In fact, my sense of safety and my perception of security are actually counter-intuitive. Compounded by Parkinson’s, my senses of direction and balance actually mislead me as I trust in them.
These physical realities are also parables of our shared spiritual condition. We are always tempted to suppose that our spiritual state depends on our own accuracy, effort, or ambition. In fact, the opposite is almost always the reality. Because of sin and its distortion of our spiritual senses, we imagine that we are more secure when we think more correctly or perform more perfectly.
In fact, to the extent our efforts lead us to trust in ourselves, to that extent we fail to trust in the only thing that gives security, namely our state of acceptance by the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. With these reminders, let us not be deceived or cling to false hope. Instead, let us cast ourselves wholeheartedly into the arms of the only one who secures us and who enables us to walk in safety. 