How Do We Give Our Problems to God?

photo by Rebekah Markewich.

“Completely have trust in God, leave everything in His hands, and believe that His love will act for your own benefit. Then God will take care of everything, because there is nothing He cannot do; everything is easy for Him. The difficult thing is for man to decide to humble himself and leave everything to God’s providence and love.” 

Saint Paisios 

I confided a problem to my sister, and she advised me to “give it to God”.  She spoke confidently, as if I could simply hand it to Him. How do you give something that you’re anxious about to God?

When I was in my twenties, I tried to give my problems to God by making a numbered list of them on paper and then writing GOD over the list in big letters. Years later, my husband and I found this list and in the light of our current issues, we laughed at my young problems. Most of those problems weren’t severe enough to be worthy of being on my list of recent stressors, but at the time, they had bothered me enough to list them. Since then, those young problems were solved, outgrown, forgotten, or left unsolved with remnants merging into my new list of problems. 

There is always a list of new anxieties that we can give to God, but how? Sometimes, giving them to the Lord means getting spiritual help. Our spiritual father or someone else in our life will have insight. We might need to repent, change something about ourselves, or act as doors open serendipitously. Other times the problem is beyond our influence or control. We faithfully pray and wait, doing nothing else towards a solution, but trusting that behind the scenes, God is moving.

Maybe writing “God” on my list wasn’t a silly idea- it was a positive physical way to symbolically let go of them. How many times do we sing “lay aside all earthly cares” while we are emotionally and in practical ways still tightly clutching those cares, hoping that we will solve them with the solution of our choosing?

Laying aside problems means accepting God’s solution and His timing. It means we know that we might not like what happens, but we trust Him and accept whatever comes from His hands.

Lord, help me to find the way to give my problems to You, to trust in Your love, and to rest in Your peace.