Strength in Weakness

Yeah, yeah! I know the Bible verses (2 Cor 12:8-10). Christ is made strong in our weakness. It’s all well and good. I love it when others are weak, Christ is strong. I teach it, I preach it. I just don’t like it when I am the one feeling weak. I especially don’t like it when I am so weak I feel helpless. But I was reminded this morning in our staff devotion time that this is exactly what Paul is talking about. And he is talking about it for me.

George, our student ministries director, was leading devotions and asked the question, “When was a time in your life when you felt most led by the Spirit, like Romans 8 says, “walking in the Spirit”? I thought about it. Of course the immediate response from a pastor is some superspiritual thing like, “I am led by the Spirit every moment of every day.” Yeah, right! I confessed that when I think about feeling led by the Spirit I am more like a cell phone with poor reception. The connection comes and goes. But as I thought more, I remembered a time when I really felt connected and totally led by the Spirit of God. It was during the most difficult time in my fifteen years of ordained ministry. It was a time of explosive conflict in a church I served as an associate. What had been little brush fires around the congregation for years (we learned later) erupted into an inferno one August following a seemingly routine issue in the life of ministry. Within hours the conflict became personal and pointed. Though I was not directly involved in any of the related issues, my convictions about what had happened made me one of two targets for all the rage. And the battle raged for over two years. There were days when I did not want to get out of bed. There were times when I was paralyzed in an attempt to avoid those who were on the attack. I never knew who I would run into at the grocery store or bank, and even in the halls of the church I served I could suddenly be confronted with a very angry person. There was also the deep sense of sadness over the loss of people who were so confused by what was happening that they withdrew from fellowship. When it was all over about 100 people left the church of 700. It felt to me like 100 deaths without goodbyes. Though I was not suicidal, there were days when I felt as though I did not want to go on living. The pain was so deep and I could see no end in sight.

As George continued to push the question I realized that this was the time I remembered most feeling the Spirit leading me. In fact, I remembering telling someone that I felt so weak I did not know if I could walk. But I did walk. And I did work, and I did go on. But I felt numb, like I was floating around from place to place. That is when I realized that the Spirit of God was carrying me. I was walking in the power of the Spirit and completely led by him. My absolute weakness allowed Christ to be my strength. I was living out the poem Footprints in the Sand.

I have been a Christian since a very young child, and I have studied Scripture since I was a teenager. I know that one of the dominant themes of Scripture is about suffering and weakness, and that we grow most in our faith when we are tested. I know that the very heart of the gospel is that through death life emerges. Through the Valley of Achor there is hope. I know this and love the truth. I don’t like living it out! It is painful. And yet this is exactly what Easter is all about. Through Lent we prepare to realize the weight of our sin and the price for its eradication on Good Friday. Easter morning, resurrection, is only possible because, as Jürgen Moltmann said, Christ suffered godforsakenness for us. Total weakness and defeat leads to absolute strength and victory. I hate it. But it is the way of the cross and it is the way of Christlikeness.

The church I served during those years grew stronger through those days of agony and pain. So did I. And I have been strengthened to travel with others walking that way of agony. Christ is sufficient. Most of the time it requires our absolute insufficiency to experience this kind of walking in the Spirit.

Just Beginning

I am middle aged and yet in so many ways just beginning. I am beginning to paint. I have wanted to for many years but had not taken up a paint brush since high school. Two years ago I began again. I started by painting a picture of my father who died in 2006. It was amazing how the painting just came out of me. I painted nine other portraits in the next 12 months. Wow! What an amazing experience. I found a huge part of myself I did not even know existed. I have since branched out to landscapes and other subjects. I am just beginning.

At 55 I am just beginning to write. Don't get me wrong. I have done a lot of writing in my time. I am notorious for hammering the letters right off the keyboards of my computers in a matter of months. I am a talker and consequently a prolific writer, but only of sermons, homilies, articles and letters, and documents, most for limited reading and use related to family or ministry. But 23 years ago I began getting my father's story as a WWII POW written down. I spent several years interviewing him and taking notes. The material sat for over ten years. Then 18 months ago I began in again to write in earnest. I researched, I painted, and I traveled to the places he fought and was held as a prisoner, and I wrote. It just came out of me. Like the paintings, it was like it was all inside me waiting to come out. Within the next few weeks I will publish this labor of love that has become so much more than a book about my dad's experience as a WWII POW. In writing it I discovered so much about myself and how my father's experience shaped me as a person and as a pastor. The book is about to be published but I am just beginning to write. I think there is a lot more writing in me.

I have been in ministry of one sort or another for over 35 years. I have been a pastor for almost 15 years. But I am just beginning to really trust God. I have been a high energy, hard driving, over-achieving leader but I have done so much on my own steam. And I am running out of steam. I have done so much out of a messianic complex filled with arrogance and rooted in my brokenness. I have been a workaholic out of a need to feel significant based on the world's value of productivity. (Thank you James Bryan Smith for pointing this out so clearly through your first chapter in The Good and Beautiful God!) I am just beginning to sleep well at night because I am just beginning to really trust that God can do without me a few hours a day.

The Spirit of God has lived in me since I was a young girl, but I am just beginning to learn what it means to practice the presence of God. Thirty plus years of ministry, a bible education and a seminary degree you would think I would be seasoned by now. I am just beginning to learn to be present in the moment and available to the Spirit of God for what God has in mind to do in me first, then through me if he chooses.

Middle aged and just beginning. I hope the good Lord gives me a few more years now that I am beginning to really learn.