“And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”
— Mark 10:27 (King James Version)
You know the moment. You're staring at the numbers on the kitchen table, or the diagnosis on the printed page, or the relationship that seems too fractured to mend, and you do the math in your head — and it doesn't work. Not by any calculation you can run. The job isn't coming. The marriage feels unsalvageable. The habit that's had its hooks in someone you love for years shows no sign of loosening. You've tried what you know to try. You are, in the plainest sense, out of your own resources.
That is precisely the room the disciples were standing in when Jesus looked at them. Moments before, He'd told a wealthy young man to give up everything and follow Him, and the man walked away sorrowful. The disciples, watching this unfold, asked the question that was really about themselves: if this is what it costs, who could possibly manage it? Jesus doesn't soften the impossibility — He names it plainly. But He doesn't leave them there. He simply relocates the burden from their hands to God's.
Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century bishop who spent the first half of his life running hard from faith and the second half writing some of its deepest reflections, understood this relocation better than most. He'd tried, by sheer will, to fix his own restlessness and failed repeatedly — it was only when he stopped relying on his own strength that he found what he called rest for a heart that had been "restless" until it found its true rest. His famous prayer, "command what you will, and grant what you command," is really just Mark 10:27 turned into a whisper: Lord, You'll have to supply what You're asking of me, because I certainly can't.
Centuries later, Charles Spurgeon — the London preacher whose sermons still stir readers today — used to remind his congregation that unbelief asks "how can this be done?" while faith asks nothing, because faith simply looks to the God for whom nothing is too hard.
So if today holds a math that doesn't work — a wall too high, a wound too old, a door too shut — you're in good company, standing exactly where the disciples stood. The invitation isn't to muster more strength. It's to look where Jesus is looking: past the impossibility, toward the God who specializes in exactly this kind of math.
A Prayer for Today
Lord, You see the places in my life where I have run out of strength and answers. Where I cannot make a way, I ask You to make one — not because I've earned it, but because nothing is too hard for You. Teach me to bring You my impossible things instead of carrying them alone. Thank You for being a God who is never boxed in by my limits. Amen.