Monday, March 18, 2024

Reach Beyond Your Grasp

³ when I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
⁴ In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I am not afraid;
what can flesh do to me? – Psalm 56:3-4

When I was in MYF about a hundred years ago, one of the activities at a church overnight was to create a banner with our personal motto or mission statement. Our youth minister’s message was really pretty simple and clear: You’re about to leave for college and start to design your own life. What is going to guide your life? What will be your lodestar?

Rev. Webb was especially good at encouraging conversation without preaching to us. On this night, he had all sorts of books and Bibles for us to explore, and we spent hours reading and talking about what we were finding. We were soooooo deep and philosophical! After a couple of hours of this, Rev. Webb shooed us off to think and work by ourselves and create our personal banner from the pile of fabrics, paper, and paints that he provided for us.

I settled on Robert Browning’s quote: A man’s reach should exceed his grasp (edited, of course, to become “a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp” because I was, after all, a budding feminist!).

My banner was on rough burlap with colorful triangles of orange and red felt and a long, jagged yellow lightning strike. I’m sure there was some meaning in there, although I no longer remember what that might have been. But the words have stuck with me, and they still resonate for me, perhaps even more now than when I was 17.

I’ve pondered these words a lot over the past year as I’ve watched my grandson move through the first year of his life, learning the basics of how to eat, how to turn over, how to crawl, how to grab, how to walk, and on and on. He effortlessly rises to each challenge. Nobody has told him that he has to learn any of this. His parents have certainly provided a safe space for him to learn how to navigate his world. But, in truth, he is pushed by some inexplicable desire to keep learning more, to keep moving forward. When he falls down, he gets up and tries again – and again, and again, and again.

Del could have chosen to stop when he learned to crawl, but he’s driven to learn how to walk. And now that he’s mastered walking, he’ll move on to learning how to run. After that, who knows!

Watching him has reminded me anew that falling back into the comfortable is awfully easy. Retreating into the known and the familiar is safe. Reaching out to do something that’s uncertain and unfamiliar is hard and scary. But, just as infants and toddlers are always in a state of learning, I want to be in that place too. I want to keep growing and that means that I must be willing to continue to reach out because growth only happens when we reach beyond our comfort zones.

Prayer: Help me not to fear the unknown but to step ahead knowing that you will comfort and support me in all ways. When I stumble, you will reach out to lift me; when I fall, you will pick me up. In all things, you will be my strength and aid. Amen.

Joan Richardson