Content with Weaknesses

Several days ago on a long drive to visit a friend, I was thinking about my voice and how I wish it was louder.  I was thinking about Mariah Carey and how she belts out a tune, and how I always wished I could sing like her.  That made me start thinking about how it would also be nice to look like Jennifer Lopez.  And keep house like Martha Stewart.  All with the heart of Mother Teresa. 

 

I don’t usually hear voices in my head, but somewhere in my consciousness I heard a divine chuckle.  And in the laughter, I heard a truth.  For some reason, our God is very comfortable with human weakness.  Have you noticed how he likes small things (“Unless you change and become like children….” Mt. 18:3), broken things (“Those who are well have no need of a physician….” Lk. 5:31), things that in some way must die before they can fully live (“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” Rev. 5:12)?  This is a God who creates greatness in ordinary things (“You are only a man!” Jn. 10:33) and who requires of his people a similar way of thinking (“The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Mt. 20:16).

 

St. Paul claimed that he boasted of his weaknesses.  He did this because he believed they placed him where he rightfully belonged – on the cross of Jesus.  Is it possible that the things we perceive as weaknesses or failings are actually the things that bind us most closely to the Holy One?  Our weaknesses, our sins, our problems and burdens – yes, they make us small, ordinary, broken.  But they are how we learn about dying and rising, about surrender, about needing a savior, and about what it truly means to be loved.

 

I will never look or sound like a celebrity.  And I will never be worthy to unbuckle the sandal of Mother Teresa much less aspire to her heart!  Like you, I have many things about myself that I would like to change (some more shallow than others!).  But I don’t perceive these things – even my serious weaknesses that are much more than skin-deep – as rotten parts of myself.  Rather they are the part of my humanity that still awaits transformation, they are my emptiness yet to be filled.  They are an invitation to God to be with me, because I know I am not whole by myself.

 

“So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

I Don't Understand Eternity

 

After a very long, very cold winter here in the Northeast, I took my two sons out for a walk on the first nice day we’d had in months.  As we turned a corner onto a long straight sidewalk, my 18-month-old wriggled down from my arms and took off running.  He ran for a third of a mile.  (Fortunately his legs are really short so I was able to keep up!)  I was amused by his reaction to wide open spaces.  He had obviously been indoors far too long.

 

I wonder if this experience could be an analogy for eternity, a concept I don’t understand (and I doubt I am alone).  We understand the limits of this world; we understand the finite.  But the infinite?  We only have brief glimpses of it, short bursts of understanding that flash in our minds and disappear quickly.  I had one of these bursts as I watched my son running as far and free as his little legs would take him after being pent up in the house all winter.  For Eli, being so young, winter was the only reality he could remember.  His was a restricted world – indoors except for quick trips back and forth to the car, bundled in bulky layers, glimpsing the sun only in passing, experiencing the beauties of winter from the other side of a window.  Of course it wasn’t all bad – there was warmth inside, family, food, books and toys.  But spring?  This was new.  It meant being outdoors, a seemingly limitless place full of wonders and discoveries.  It meant boundless freedom that went on and on, all the way down Milford Point Road.

 

Eternity hangs around the edges of our consciousness – a promise we can’t live without, but an incomprehensible future that may scare us a bit because of its…forever-ness.  It isn’t our fault that we just don’t get it – it is something we have never experienced.  But here we trust – we live in trusting expectation.  For now, our winter does have its joys, and one of them is the anticipation of spring. 

 

Eli enjoys the warmth of spring after a long winter.

Eli enjoys the warmth of spring after a long winter.

"No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

Catherine Doherty on Getting through the Hard Times

“We Russians used to talk about this in New York.  We had a very rough time when we first came.  We were overworked and underpaid.  We used to discuss among ourselves how we survived.  We came to the conclusion that we survived because we really believed that God was our rest.  When I asked a friend of mine, ‘How do we survive?’ this is exactly what she said:  ‘Oh, we have Christ for a pillow.’”

-- Catherine Doherty, Poustinia


The Great Equalizer

In the last post, I referred to human sinfulness – or our awareness of it – as “the equalizer.”  Karl Barth’s quote reveals how admitting our own sinfulness has a positive result:  it evens out the playing field of our lives by removing false notions of “greater and lesser” or “us and them.”  When we see ourselves as we really are – as sinners among sinners – we see one another eye to eye, without condescension.  We no longer stand on a higher place looking down on those around us.  The initial recognition of our failings is painful (Jesus likened it to removing a plank from our eye), and we are certainly free to continue deceiving ourselves, to keep our reserved spot on a pedestal removed from the “others” who we look down upon for a variety of reasons.  But when we allow an awareness of our sin to take root – not a self-hating and destructive awareness, but a frank and realistic one – we can move past the initial pain of humility and begin to enjoy its equalizing effects.  No longer on a pedestal alone, trying to maintain the farce of our own perfection, we join our friends, family, acquaintances, and even the strangers in our lives with an appreciation for their struggles and a hope that they will see and accept us as we are.

 

Awareness of our brokenness makes us brothers…but even more importantly, it primes us for the Greatest Equalizer of all, and that of course is love.  The one alone on the pedestal needs nothing, receives nothing.  He is too busy balancing in a precarious place, too full of himself to perceive a need for another.  But those who are aware of their own sin want an antidote, they long for a solution – and they are willing to look beyond themselves for the answer.  A sinner – and only a sinner – needs a savior. 

 

It is in our rightful place among our sinful brothers and sisters that we encounter this Savior.  He comes at times as one of them, to help us remove the plank from our eye.  He does this with love, and he does it to prepare us – in case he should need us to assist him in removing a speck from the eye of another.  The very process of salvation is a corporate affair, and in the end – planks and specks removed – we stand together before our God, willing victims of the Great Equalizer.