Weaknesses and Wonderfulnesses

I love Jesus sometimes. I mean obviously I’m aiming for the whole time but I suppose genuinely loving him on occasions is a good start – and, you will be glad to learn, I hope, that this is one of those occasions.

So, have some background. I’ve been asking Jesus to humble me for what must be nearly a year now. I know it sounds weird that I’m asking Jesus to change what I’m like rather than just doing it, but if you’ve ever tried you’ll know that something like pride is surprisingly tricky to change just by trying, so I ask Jesus to humble me, and I try to humble myself, and I hope that he’ll manage it with some help from me. Background over.

At the weekend I was feeling pretty exhausted. I’ve been pretty busy as you might have guessed, and even the ‘holiday’ weekend was quite effortful, and I haven’t had a proper Sabbath day off for ages, and I haven’t managed to spend enough time just chillin’ with Jesus. (Apologies to those with a more sophisticated taste in language, but I think chillin’ just about sums up what I’m missin’.) And the tiredness was starting to do that thing where it spills over from physical into mental and emotional and you just feel a bit like curling up for a long time, and it feels a bit silly when you remember that God promised that ‘those who hope in the LORD will ... soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint’. But then I got an email from my brother where he mentioned 2 Corinthians 12 verse 9. And I couldn’t remember what it was so I looked it up, and it just hit me like a really good hot shower. Paul writes this:

“To keep me from becoming conceited... there was given me a thorn in the flesh... Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I honestly - no religious kid exaggeration - felt such joy from reading those words. “My power is made perfect in weakness”. It just hit me that it was OK for me to be weak, to be struggling, even to fail – it’s OK. It’s even a good thing, because when I realise that I’m not ‘good enough’ all by myself, I get to see just how good Jesus is. You never know how much your dad loves you until you really, really need a hug.

And then this morning I had a double English lesson to start the day – that’s half seven until twenty to nine. But last night it rained (which is good, the crops needed it) but this meant (the causal link is yet to be fully explained to me) that the students were incredibly late. At 7:30 there was one person waiting for Standard 6 – my class. We started at quarter to eight with about 10 kids, and they were still arriving at 8:30. My lesson failed miserably, and I felt miserable. And I had half an hour before my next one. And I came back to the hut, and I got on my knees and I prayed. And I found myself thanking Jesus that he had actually humbled me – that I had realised that I am actually not very good at this. I am not very good at making myself easy to understand, I am not very good at remembering their names, or planning lessons that work at their level, or resisting the temptation to use more and longer words when they are struggling to grasp the few short ones I started with. And I prayed that his power would be made perfect in my weakness. That my struggles and failures would somehow help to reveal how beautiful he is. And then I went out to my next set of lessons.

And, because Jesus is cool like this, they were absolutely brilliant. Not perfect obviously – those problems haven’t just evaporated – but they were much more fun, they felt pretty successful, and as I was doing them I just got happier and happier and happier.

I hope this hasn’t been sickeningly cheesy for all of you – and thanks for reading how I’m doing! If there are things I’m failing to mention that anyone would like to know, please do ask!

Auf wiedersehen,

Mike