Weakness...

Children have been teaching me more than I would care to admit these days. The most recent is about weakness. I was holding my friend’s 1 ½ month old baby boy when it struck me how cute we find weakness when they are this age. It doesn’t bother us that this baby can’t do anything on his own. It doesn’t bother us that he cries (well, most of the time). It doesn’t bother us that he is weak, he knows it, you know it… the WORLD knows he can’t do it by himself.

But the older we get the more we start to think, ‘I can do this by myself. I don’t need anyone’s help. I can do it self!’ (Something Danny, the lil’ boy to the left is heard saying on a very regular basis). And as we get older still we start seeing weakness as a bad thing. We start viewing it as inability to do it “self” so we try to prove to the world that we are not weak and that we can somehow manage all of life without help.

I started thinking of all the weakness found in the Bible…let’s see we have Adam who couldn’t do it right even though he only had ONE rule. Then we have Abraham who calls his wife his sister… and then Moses who couldn’t speak. Let’s not forget Gideon the least of the least of his family (and you think YOU’RE the black sheep!). And David the adulterer, murderer, naked dancer… how long is his list?? Jonah, the guy who ran from God. Flip to the New Testament and we find Peter who talks WAY too much and acts on impulse. Paul killed followers of Christ and can’t see to save his life. We have tax collectors, prostitutes, and just outright sinners. This is a list of people who, when measured up fall short on every level… but SOMEHOW God chose to use weakness. He loves to use weakness.

But we hate it… I hate it. I hate admitting that I need someone else to do it for me or worse yet that I can’t do it and no one can do it for me. I’m just stuck. As I was reading it 1 Cor 1 the other day, I came across this verse that I love, “God uses the foolishness of the world to shame the wise.” He LOVES to use weakness because when he does his power is made known. I feel SO weak in my Spanish… in my relationships… in pretty much all I do and that is exactly where God wants me to be so that I will depend on him FULLY. Kinda like the lil’ baby I was holding, God sees me as cute and loves to care in my weakness… my weakness is a strength in the hands of a strong God.