Surrender
and the God of all mercies
Since entering the new year, my mind keeps returning to the word surrender. I don’t have a typical practice of choosing a word for the year, though I do have some annual reflection practices and in the early months of 2026, this word seemed to choose me. I bristle against this word. Surrender feels like a threat to my hopes, my autonomy. I assume that to surrender means I’m letting go, giving up, or giving in.
A theme that comes up often in my counseling work is this idea of being at the mercy of other people or our circumstances —
decisions that result in our confusion, pain, or harm
disease that brings life-altering changes
death of a loved one, shifting the entire landscape of our future.
Being at the mercy of such things can just about break us.
So many Christians speak of God’s providence in such things, as if to say that we can more readily surrender when we believe it comes by way of divine ordination.1 Our surrendering serves a holy purpose if we acquiesce to such things. And who doesn’t want to be more holy, right?
But God, you have said that your mercies, rooted in your steadfast love, are new every morning.2 Your mercies are directed by your love for us. Surrender becomes safe and keeps us sane, when we remember this. We surrender to you, and not to some arbitrary or aloof version of you. We are not raising a white flag. Nor are we giving up the fight for truth, wisdom, and goodness.
Like the psalmist, we cease our striving to comprehend what you are doing.3 We stop trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense. We pour out our cries of lament, we come before you with our strong complaints. Our resistance is quieted and we are comforted by retreating to you. This is holy surrender.
I’m not making any doctrinal declarations here. I’m simply referencing the ways we are quick to use doctrine as a means of silencing or bypassing real impact or grief.
Lamentations 3:22-23
Psalm 131