Letting Go With All Your Strength
Letting Go to Enhance Health and Well-Being
Reflection By Scott Stoner
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
- Matthew 11:29-30 (The Message)
The Strength Quadrant of the Living Compass focuses on Care for the Body and Stress Resilience. How we carry and manage stress and our ability to let it go when it is time is key to our physical well-being.
Here’s a little exercise to remind us how it feels to hold on to stress. Take both your hands and make a fist. Clench them as hard as you can and hold them for fifteen seconds. Now, gradually open your hands and release your clenched fists. What difference do you notice in your body and the overall way you feel between these two states?
The scripture above from Matthew reminds us that our spirituality can give us the ability to live with the “unforced rhythms of grace” and to “learn to live freely and lightly.”
Opening our hands not only releases tension but also opens us to be more receptive of God’s grace. One cannot be open to others, or to God, with a clenched fist.
Making It Personal: What speaks to you in the scripture above from Matthew? What did you notice in the exercise of clenching and unclenching your hands? Do you have a prayer or spiritual practice that helps ground you in the “unforced rhythms of grace”?
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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Carolyn Karl, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.
In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.