“…But God, in His mercy, interrupted my striving.”
I’ve always loved the words “But God” in Scripture.
In Ephesians 2, Paul spends the first few verses describing a situation we could never fix with more effort. And then verse 4 begins:
“But God, being rich in mercy…”
Everything changes after those two words. God sees our striving and our struggle to fix something and he says, “Hold on, we need to pause.”
And I think there’s something here for those of us who have gotten really good at trying harder.
For a long time, I thought the answer to becoming more patient, more gentle, more faithful, more like Jesus was simply more effort.
Try harder.
Do better.
Get it together.
And effort certainly has its place. But somewhere along the way, my effort had turned into striving. I was depending more on my ability to change myself than on God’s ability to change me.
But God, in His mercy, interrupted my striving.
I’m learning that sometimes His mercy looks like allowing us to reach the end of what our own strength can accomplish.
And he’s not interrupting us to shame us for not being strong enough, but to remind us that we were never meant to transform ourselves.
We need God. We need His interruption. We need His mercy… and sometimes the interruption is His mercy.
