The Way ✦ What You Are Holding
Matthew 16:25 | Sunday, May 31, 2026
– 3 min read
The Scene
He has been offered everything he asked for.
Three years ago he made a list — not formally, not written down anywhere, but the list every person carries in the back of their mind of what they would need to feel settled. Financial security above a certain threshold. A marriage that had found its footing again. His oldest son back in contact after two years of silence. Work that felt like it mattered. He had prayed over that list, worked toward it, watched God move in ways he could not have engineered.
By last fall, every item on the list was checked.
He should feel free. He does not feel free. What he feels instead is a new and more sophisticated version of the same grip — a constant low-level vigilance about keeping what he has, a fear he cannot fully name about the ways each of these things could be taken from him, a calendar that has quietly reorganized itself around protecting the life he has built.
He is not ungrateful. He is grateful every day. But somewhere in the process of receiving what he asked for, he has wrapped both hands around it — and the grip that was supposed to feel like security feels, if he is honest, more like a cage.
He has been praying about it for three months. The prayer keeps coming back to one word he does not want to sit with.
Release.
Scripture
Matthew 16:25
"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."
The Teaching
Jesus does not make this sound difficult. He states it as a simple mechanism — the way things work, the structure of the kingdom. Grip and lose. Release and find.
The rich young ruler understood exactly what Jesus was asking. He was not confused. He came running, he knelt, he had kept every commandment since childhood — and Jesus looked at him and loved him and told him the one thing he lacked. Sell everything. Give to the poor. Come follow me. The young man went away grieving because he had great wealth — and he could not open the hand.
Notice what he left with. He left with everything he came with and nothing he came for. He asked for eternal life and walked away with his portfolio intact and empty hands where the answer should have been. The grip cost him the very thing he was reaching for.
Jesus is not describing an arbitrary requirement. He is describing a law as reliable as gravity. The thing you wrap both hands around to keep safe is the thing most at risk — not because God takes it, but because the posture of clutching is itself the thing that closes off the life you are trying to protect. Whoever loses their life for me will find it. The finding is on the other side of the releasing. It cannot be found any other way.
The Way Before You
You have your version of the list. The thing — or the collection of things — that you have been working toward, praying toward, waiting for. And some of those things have arrived. And the arrival has not produced the freedom you expected because somewhere in receiving them you wrapped your hands around them and the grip has become its own kind of weight.
The rich young ruler was not a bad man. He was a devoted man who had one thing he could not open. And Jesus did not chase him down the road and negotiate. He let him go — because the invitation was real and the cost was real and the young man had to choose.
The invitation is the same for you. Not to lose what you have for no reason — but to release it into the hands of the one who gave it, which is the only posture from which it can actually become what it was meant to be.
The grip is not keeping it safe. The open hand is.
What is the one thing you are holding with both hands that Jesus is asking you to open?
Reflection
What is on your version of the list — and which item on it have you wrapped both hands around in a way that has become its own kind of weight?
Prayer
Lord, I received what I asked for and somewhere in receiving it I closed my fist around it. I can feel the grip. I know what it is costing me. I am opening my hand today \u2014 not because I do not want it, but because I trust you more than I trust my ability to keep it. Into your hands. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Walking in The Way — Today's Step ⭐
Today I will: Name the one thing I am holding with both hands — and practice opening that hand, specifically, in prayer today.
I will watch for: The moment the grip tightens — the low-level vigilance, the protective reflex — and choose the open hand instead.
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