letting go as fulfilment

Accepting
walking through hedge

I used to think letting go was about delayed gratification. Kind of like this: the one who loses his life will find it – eventually. But I’ve been thinking that is only the shallowest version of this truth. I’m wondering if the dying and the new life aren’t simultaneous.

An iconic moment in our family’s life was when we felt we had to voluntarily give up a house that we had purchased because the realtor had verbally promised it to another family. We really wanted that house. Plus we felt there was no other house we wanted, and we were desperate to move to town. It hurt to let it go.

But the more I look back at it, the more I see that the actual act of letting go was more life-giving than anything else that came from it. A few people re-assured us that we would be blessed by finding a better house, which to us was a false promise that missed the point. We didn’t do it as some kind of gamble. We did it because we thought it was right. I’d even have to call it obedient ā€“ to not do it would have felt like a rebellion against all that seemed to us to be life-giving truth from God. And alongside the pain (which lasted a long time ā€“ so long, in fact, that I think it spoke to why it was better for us to let the house go), it also felt very good.

Could this be true for all divine bargains we see referenced ā€“ giving so that we are blessed, meekness that inherits the world, dying to get eternal life? Maybe the letting go in each of these bargains is already the fulfillment.

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