Your Dying Spouse 406 - Precious Surrender {FMF}

I never thought I would be writing a post called Precious Surrender (to go along with the previous two posts, Precious Moments and Precious Words), but time and circumstance oes have a way of changing one's outlook.

So, of course, does realizing that you're interpreting a word completely wrong.

I had thought of surrender in terms of 'giving up', but I've learned that in the Christian sense, it's not that at all.

What Christian surrender is, is really subordination, the acknowledgement that God's will trumps ours.

It doesn't mean that we can't have our own wants, our own set of desires; indeed, being made in the image of God, we're supposed to have these.

We're supposed to want happy lives ("I am come that you may have joy, and that your joy will be full."), and health, and even prosperity. Nothing wrong with these; Jesus raised lazarus from the dead, which is kind of the ultimate expression of health, and Solomon was reputed to be the richest man in history (but even he didn't have an iPhone X, and at $1200 a pop, I can see why).

And we're supposed to work toward these. We're supposed to do out best.

There's a Japanese expression that fits here, ganbatte. It means, "Please continue to do your best."

We have a clue in ganbatte. The implicit meaning (and it's explicit in Samurai culture) is that doing your best is not an option. It's expected. There's no excuse for not giving a maximum effort. (Excuse is the Five Minute Friday prompt this week.)

But winning is not. Winning is secondary.

The Samurai have given us another glue, in the banner carried by the near-legendary Kusunoki Masashige, who famously - and willingly - met his end, honourably, at Minatogawa.

His banner carried the kanji characters, Hirihotenten.

The literal translation is "Thinking about debt is important; thinking about death is unimportant."

Debt, you see, is something we can control, and it's something God expects us to control.

But death is in God's hands, and thus the alternate translation of Hirihokenten:

"God's will."

We're expected to fight hard, to do our best. When the katana is broken, we draw the tanto, the dagger, and fight on...and when it's knocked from our hands, well, it's fists and fingernails and teeth.

But our end is God's will.

We do our best, and fight to the last, and ultimately put our fate in His hands.

And that's what surrender is all about.

A quick aside - when Masashige left his home for his rendezvous with destiny at Minatogawa, he left a letter for his wife, in which he wished that his life might be a spool of thread...and, unspooled, that he could live his time with her again. If that doesn't make you flat-out cry, you've got real problems.

Musical accompaniment comes from Needtobreathe (an all-time great Christian band), with Keep Your Eyes Open.

Please pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.

Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.

WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!

And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.