My Weakness

God and I met before coffee this morning. (There truly is something about meeting Him early in the morning!) As I prayed and talked and worried aloud and spilled my guts, I fell into my usual routine of confessing all of the things I should do that I don't and asking for protection against all of the things that scare me that I can't control. In other words, my weakness. The infirmity of my flesh and the smallness of my might.

But God spoke something to my heart that knocked my socks off-He told me that He created my weakness! It didn't catch Him by surprise. He put it there. He isn't shocked, or disgusted, or offended by it. WOW!

I spend so much time trying to make up for that weakness, by trying to plan for every eventuality that might happen in our life. Or by trying to cover up the failings in me that makes me so very imperfect, unlovable, unusable. Like Adam, sowing up those fig-leaf board shorts. But we are wasting so much effort on trying to hide or cover up for an ingredient that the designer deliberately chose for the creation. Before He ever made you or I, He wrote in His word that His strength is made perfect, or complete, or finished, in our weakness. (2 Cor 12:9) John writes that "nothing-not one thing!-came into being without him." (John 1:3, the Message) Even my weakness! It's like the baking powder that the baker deliberately pulls out of the cupboard and puts into the bread, because He knows it is a necessary ingredient for the bread to rise even higher.

I must let this anxiety over the things I am too weak to control in the future, or the shame over the inherent weakness of this flesh I am presently living in GO! I sense that in embracing that weakness, I will open it up for God to more freely show His strength, and that is what I desperately long for.