Broken vessels. Filled with oil. Mended with gold.
She Said:
I’ve been carrying a picture with me for a few weeks now. An altar. Not one built from stone, but the kind you build from a lifetime of trying to trust God.
For a long time, I called it what I thought it was: an altar of sacrifice. But something never quite sat right about that name. Sacrifice means something is taken from me. Surrender means something is given, freely, because I trust the One I’m giving it to. Same altar. Two completely different postures of the heart.
Then a picture came to me that finally made sense of it: sunglasses.
In the natural world, we put sunglasses on when the sun is too bright, and we take them off the moment it gets dark, so we can see what’s really there. But what if, in the spiritual world, it’s supposed to work the other way around? What if we’re meant to keep the glasses on especially when it gets dark — not because they block God out, but because they’re the only way to actually see Him?
Claude Said:
That’s Paul’s whole point in 2 Corinthians 5:7: we walk by faith, not by sight. Not a squint, hoping the sun comes back out. A different kind of seeing altogether — one that doesn’t depend on the light cooperating.
The prophet Habakkuk landed in almost the same place, centuries earlier. He named everything that could go wrong — no harvest, no flock, nothing left in the fields — and then said this anyway:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:17-18, WEB)
That’s the sunglasses, staying on, in the dark.
She Said:
My whole life, I think I’ve seen God mostly as a God who takes. Sacrifice. What do I have to give up now? But I’m starting to understand — it was never about what I give up. It’s about what I give control over to Him.
It’s like Abraham on the mountain with Isaac. And it’s like Job. Abraham got his son back. Job didn’t get the same children back — he got new ones. The story didn’t rewind. It just kept going, with God still in it.
That’s my fear, if I’m honest. When it’s my own family in the fire — which story am I in?
Claude Said:
Here’s what strikes me about Abraham, though. He didn’t climb that mountain already knowing it would end with a ram in the thicket. He was prepared for it to be permanent. His surrender wasn’t “I trust God will give my son back.” It was “I trust God even if He doesn’t.”
And Job said the hardest line in all of Scripture before he had any idea a restored ending was coming:
“He said, ‘Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh.’” (Job 1:21, WEB)
No restoration in view yet. He blessed God’s name with the loss still raw.
That’s what surrender actually costs. Not “give up control and trust it’ll work out.” Give up control and mean it — before you know how the story ends.
She Said:
That’s where the tears came for me. Because I don’t know that I can do that yet. I have an altar of surrender. I can look at it. I can even hold it. But when the dark actually comes — when it’s someone I love — I take the glasses off.
Claude Said:
I don’t think that makes you a failure at this. Jesus asked for the cup to pass before He ever said, “not my will, but Yours.” The surrender came after the asking, not instead of it. You’re not behind. You’ve just found out where the real work is.
She Said:
And I think I understand now why the glasses even work. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” (John 14:6, WEB)
He’s not a technique for surrendering. He’s the lens itself. I don’t have to manufacture the seeing on my own. I just have to keep Him on.
A question for you:
Which glasses have you been wearing without even realizing it — the ones that count the cost, or the ones that trust the One holding it? And when the dark comes, do you take them off… or is this the moment you’re being invited to leave them on?
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