Hold my Hand

"For I the LORD your God will hold your right hand, saying unto thee, 'Fear not; I will help you.' " -Isaiah 41:13

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A while ago I had been doing some praying about this year, and all of the hundreds upon hundreds of very large and important things which I would have to be juggling this year, and, being overwhelmed, my mind came to the many instances in the Bible in which God says "Fear not for I am with you," and yet we don't believe Him. It is almost as if, Common English being so often used arbitrarily, that we often miss the great magnitude of that the statement being that God is always with us. Not looking down from heaven only, simply throwing down little axioms of encouragement simply meant to trick us into taking a few more steps. God is actually with us every day and every moment, experiencing our own situations as they happen. God does not want us to be the Lone Ranger, having to shoot down all of the enemy, with no one else to help or turn to. That is His job. God is greater than superman. I don't even come close.

God tells His children that he "will hold your right hand." I don't know. That image, to me, is a powerful one. God is not some nameless general in the battle of God vs. the World, and he certainly does not simply send his troops to places that He himself would never go. He goes there himself, with us, as we are in the moment. And it is in that instant in which He helps us. So we have every reason to "Fear not". We know that God is with us, and that when we need it, the help will surely follow.

Weak and Strong

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." --II Corinthians 12:9 (NASB)

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I am oftentimes astonished at how utterly powerless I am to control the circumstances of my life and those around me. And it is not so much that I am surprised that such things do happen to me, but rather that I myself, the great and mighty being which lives my life, cannot do anything about it. I suppose that everyone, whether they would profess it openly or not, would like to be thought of as strong, dependable, and brave. Everyone wants to be thought of as a hero, just like superman, just like wonderwoman, intelligent, strong, and unbeatable. Everyone wants to win. Everyone wants to be on top. In our secondary school culture and society, more and more I see and feel the pressure to be strong. And we all, in one way or another, answer that call to the best of our ability. But it also makes me wonder, just how many of us retreat towards the end of the day, and lay upon our beds and cry out in despair for just how really, utterly, and unequivocally weak and destitute we are of any true virtue of our own in our possession.

We all do our best to appear strong, to appear well thought out and put together, to avoid the shame of being human. We play God, the saint, the savior, but at the end the day we know that we have nothing. And I know that some people cannot deal with that. But it is all so very interesting.

At my church we have lately been going through the life of Sampson. What an intriguing character he is! And how appropriate for this subject. Sampson, a man who has been gifted with enormous physical strength, far beyond any other man in history, is a nazarite with a special vow, and is judge of Israel. One would think he would be a hero! One might think he could be a saint! A savior of Israel from their enemies, the Philistines! But Sampson, in all his strength and might, in all of his God-bestown gifts, was utterly powerless to keep his life from falling apart.

Sampson makes one bad choice after another, until even his own wife tries to kill him three times. And at the end of his life, his final act is his revenge on the Philistines. But what a wretched life to lead. How did it get this way? How is it that Sampson, judge of Israel, eventually became the bane of his own nation, his own people, and his family?

"My grace is sufficient for you," says the LORD, "for power is perfected in weakness." Sampson's strength did not come to him because he worked any harder than the Philistines, or even because he was an Israelite! It was because God decided to give it to him in order to fulfill his purposes for Sampson.

Sampson forgot whose strength it was. We forget too. At least I do.

So what does it mean to be weak, or to be strong? I suppose that when we are weak, as we always are, if we rely upon God, and trust that His "grace is sufficient", then his strength will will make us strong, and allow us to have His control to be in charge of our lives.