The Possible Impossible
“An impossibility, with God, becomes a glorious impossibility.” -Larry Watson
I remember helping my father set a corner post for a fence once. My brother and I were just little kids, and the post was a section cut from a heavy electrical pole. To sink this post, the required hole was deep and wide. To make matters even more difficult, the section was lying on a flatbed trailer and needed to be moved to the hole and dropped in place.
I looked at the hole, then the giant-sized post, then at my brother and then at my own hands. “This is will not happen,” I thought. My father looked at the pole, then at the hole, then at us. Lowering himself into a crouch beside the trailer, he said, “Roll it off on my back.”
“What?”
“You heard me, roll it off on my back.”
“Are you sure?”
“Roll it off the trailer and on my back.”
So that’s what we did. We slowly rolled it off the edge, and he laid it across his back. Slowly he stood up, walked over to the hole, turned around and dropped it with a great hollow thud into the hole. Had he not picked it up and carried it, it would have never happened. My brother and I were too small at the time. It was too much for us alone.
This childhood memory surfaced recently while I read from Psalms. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass (Psalm 37:5). Interestingly, in Hebrew, the word “commit” means “to roll off onto.” I can roll my way, my life, off onto the shoulders of God, trust him fully with it, and he will bring his plans to fruition. He says, “Roll it off onto me.” Our weakness never changes God’s strength. My hands are too weak, but not his. Jesus himself said, “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
Do you face seemingly insurmountable obstacles? The mountain seems too high, the valley too low and the waters too swift? You look at your situation and declare, “There’s just no way.” It looks impossible. For many, this difficult season raises many questions. How long will the virus pose a threat? When will life return to normal? How is all of this going to work out? It’s a deep hole and a heavy load, and we find ourselves scratching our collective head, looking at our own weakness and declaring that it is too great to navigate alone.
In Seeing the Invisible, A.B. Simpson wrote, "Into the body, whose constitution is exhausted and its springs of life run out, He can command health and strength. And so faith begins where human hopes and prospects end, and man's extremity is God's own opportunity." Impossibilities for us become God’s opportunities for his glory to be seen and his name praised, if we will “roll” those impossibilities off onto him.
Pray that…
We will trust God to sustain us and provide for us and our families during this time. – Psalm 55:22 Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
We will make our impossibilities a matter of continued prayer and not a matter of persistent anxiety. – Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
We will remain humble in this season and wait on God to lift our burdens in his time. – 1 Peter 5:6-7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.