weakness – Keeping Heart

“Can I just have 15 minutes?” is my request, delivered with more edge than I expected. Sometimes, I just don’t want anyone touching me. Which is to say, my body hurts, I’m tired (or busy), and I don’t want anything else asked of me right now.

I think I used to imagine Jesus’ relationship with the crowds like that of a speaker with an audience: They’d listen to him in large numbers like a sold-out stadium, then gather around as people might surround a guest lecturer after a talk. Even with a sizable group, listeners instinctively wait their turn and respectfully give the famous person some breathing space. Being a mom of 4 has changed that perception.

As long as I’m at home, there is no escaping our little crowd. I could be sitting on the mat in front of the stove and somehow it’s now their new favorite hangout. Not only am I no longer alone, the kitchen floor becomes strewn with books and toys. Case in point: Since I wrote that last sentence, a metal bowl has been placed on my left arm and two kids now flank me, holding clementines for me to peel. Another has pointed a large stick in my face.

“Please don’t sit on my arm.”
“I’m not sitting on your arm!”
“Yes, you were. You were JUST sitting on my arm.”
“I’m not sitting on your arm now.”

Maybe I used to picture how tired and busy Jesus might be, constantly surrounded by crowds. Now I feel it in my body.

I opened the Scriptures this morning, and I watched Jesus walking by the sea, then making his way up a mountain. He sits down. And that’s when the crowds come.

“The lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others,” the text says. “And they put them at his feet, and he healed them” (Matt. 15:29-31.)

This week, Jeff served our church in a way he always has. For some reason it caught my attention differently this time. And when I paid notice, my gratitude for my husband swelled. That’s what happened when I saw this crowd surrounding Jesus. I saw my King with fresh eyes.

In an earlier chapter, the moment they recognized him in town, people “sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment” (Matt. 14:35-36).

All the sick in the region?

I look across the street at my neighbor’s house and imagine what it’d be like to see homes empty out in Staten Island. If everyone chronically or critically ill went to seek healing all at once at the same place. Who would they bring? Would I go for my back pain? How uncomfortable would it have been to be among those pressing in to touch him? To hear people yelling out for help, their voices so persistent that the disciples would plead with their Master to tell them to stop.

Then I saw Jesus, literally surrounded by the broken.

The lame.
The blind.
The crippled.
“And many others.”

I saw him bending down to speak, to listen to a request, to touch, and to be touched.

What kind of Love must this be to not only acquiesce to, but welcome such a crowd? What power would stoop so low? What humility to heal and then, unwilling that the weak would faint on their way home, in compassion prepare a meal for thousands? How tenderly, how kindly, how joyfully he serves. What a sight it was to behold!, even if only in my mind’s eye.

In the future I may remember this scene in the context of motherhood, of Jesus as example to follow, (how do I treat my little flock that, at this very moment, is talking to me about June birthdays, pushing me off the couch, and pulling my hand off the computer keys. “I’m hungry, I’m hungry!” says the arm-tugger.) But right now, I’m just marveling at my King. He is the God of the broken, who welcomes the weak. The God who serves the crowds.

We answered this question after church on Sunday: “What difference would it be make for you to see the church as a hospital for sinners and not as a waiting room for a job interview?” This morning the Lord answered for me: Seeing the sick, I’d behold the Physician among them, and having seen him, my heart would love him so.

“Only by surrender to our proper human place can we glorify and enjoy God the way we say we want to and the way he requires.” – Sensing Jesus, Zack Eswine

I was dreaming recently about what it would be like not to be beset with my particular set of social, physical, and emotional weaknesses. If I weren’t so prone to anxiety… If social situations didn’t make my stomach hurt… If my body were stronger and I had a bigger capacity… And it all seemed so ideal.

I didn’t realize though, that I was neglecting a key variable in this thought experiment. That is, until a wise friend said a few days later, “Maybe if you were able to do all you wanted to, you would come to the end of your life and say, ‘Look at how productive my life was.’ But because you can’t, now you’ll say, ‘Look at what God did.’”

Truth.

God has countless, hidden purposes in our weaknesses, and I would never claim that guarding us against pride is the only, or even main, reason why he assigns us our trials. But in the Scriptures and in my life, it is one of them.

The Apostle Paul had a thorn, a trial, that he pleaded three times for God to remove. But God said no, saying to Paul instead these well known words, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). At times I have seen my weaknesses used this way, as the lightning rod for God to display his greatness and power. But lately, I have been camping out a few verses back to where Paul writes of his thorn and says, it was “to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor. 12:7).

In the calculations I was making which resulted in a picture of my ideal self, I had not accounted for one weakness that isn’t merely human frailty, but an insidious, deadly, and corrupting sin in me— pride. With my friend’s words of truth factored in, I’ve been thinking again of what it would be like if God removed all the weaknesses I wanted him to. But this time I shudder.

You see, if it were up to me, I’d be super human.

I’d be fearless, confident, and competent. A force to be reckoned with, I’d be, for all intents and purposes, limitless in strength, wisdom, and capacity.

I wouldn’t need to eat or sleep or sit down or go to the bathroom because I’d be doing more “productive” things. (“Are you an ascetic?” my sister has asked, and with good reason.)

I wouldn’t be needy, and would ever be in the position of giver rather than in need of others.

And, come to think of it, I guess wouldn’t need God.

I am not unlike our first mother who listened to the voice of the serpent. You will be like God! — not in the sense of being his representative, but his replacement. Like the builders of Babel crying, “Let us make a name for ourselves!” my heart in it’s twisted depravity yearns to say, “Look at all I’ve accomplished (for God)!”

But this is not the way of our Lord. God does not take delight in the strength of men (Ps. 147:10). He is never the beneficent of our works, never in need of our productivity. He alone never slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121). He alone is always at work (Jn. 5:17). God destroys the wisdom of the wise and discernment of the discerning. He makes foolish the wise and does not choose the strong. And he does this so no human being might boast in his presence (1 Cor. 1).

Just as Paul’s thorn was given to him by God’s grace for the sake of his own soul, sometimes God guards us from ourselves through our weaknesses. The very weaknesses we pray for God to remove may be God’s grace to us, for the sake of sparing our souls. God only knows who we would be not only apart from his saving grace, but for gracious trials from his Fatherly hand.

I know partially the danger I would be to myself and those around me if I were unencumbered by weaknesses. It is scary how much harsher I would be to others and how much credit I yearn to take. Through my weaknesses, God is in some ways keeping me from being tempted beyond what I can bear.

Even more importantly, God knows I would be blind to his grace, power, and lovingkindness if not for his work of bringing and keeping me low. Our Lord delights to show himself glorious as our powerful, kind, and gracious Giver and Sustainer. His righteousness is on display as he lifts up the powerless and defends the weak.

God wonderfully takes our work, bound in time and fraught with weakness, and accomplishes his eternal purposes through them. And when we come to him in humility, in recognition of the reality of our dependence, how kindly he supplies our needs and reveals his grace. All these things he does to the praise of his glory, giving us the most precious gift of all, true knowledge of him in a loving relationship.

As God is shedding the light of grace upon my weaknesses and limits, I am coming to a very different conclusion today in my “If I were/weren’t…” thought experiment. Could God be doing the same for you? Maybe he is, in unexpected ways, answering our prayers to spend and end our days proclaiming truly, Look at all God has done– through, in, and for us, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Tag: weakness

God Among the Crowds

To Keep Me From Becoming Conceited: A Thought Experiment