Tag: Miracles

weak-shaming

I can’t walk.

It’s not a temporary condition. It doesn’t only afflict me on certain days. It’s lifelong. If my overhead lift in the bedroom loses power I have to wait for it to recharge just so I can perform the simple task of getting into bed. If the ramp on my van quits working I’m stuck inside until somebody comes by to help (hopefully someone who understands basic mechanics).

There are days my paralysis gets the best of me. A good cry usually gets me back to center. The Good Lord knows and I feel seen.

I’m weak. It’s my lot in life. Don’t cry for me, Argentina, it’s all good. One of the reasons I know so is because there’s a verse in the Bible about me.

Look at your situation when you were called, brothers and sisters! By ordinary human standards not many were wise, not many were powerful, not many were from the upper class. But God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise. God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong.1

Don’t let my pastor hear this, but while he was preaching this morning I dug into the text he was expositing (Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verse 13, yes I was listening) from my Bible app. I came across this beautiful nugget of a story from The Preacher’s Commentary:

“To see Michelangelo’s Pietà—the sculpture depicting Mary holding her son, Jesus, after He was taken down from the Cross—is an overwhelming experience. Yet, the legend behind the stone is an inspiration in itself. Early in his career, Michelangelo was too poor to buy the marble for his sculpting. He had to pick his way through the rejected or ruined stones of other sculptors. As he eyed the marble, he said that he could see the figure inside waiting to be released by his chisel. Dragging it home, he freed the figures of Mary and Jesus that he envisioned and thus produced one of the miracles of artistic creation—from a reject.”2

Paul, the apostle, knew something about weakness. But he also knew something about God‘s workmanship. He said we rejects and castoffs are really God’s “masterpiece,” his artwork…his poem.3

Here’s N. T. Wright to add some flavor:

Those who are grasped by grace in the gospel and who bear witness to that in their loyal belief in the one God, focused on Jesus, are not merely beneficiaries, recipients of God’s mercy; they are also agents. They are poems in which God is addressing his world, and, as poems are designed to do, they break open existing ways of looking at things and spark the mind to imagine a different way to be human.


“A different way to be human.”

My, my, my. Sign me up because the world’s way of being fully human is turning into an inbred mess! There’s no rhyme or reason to humankind left to itself.

Are you feeling pretty weak about yourself today? Yeah, I bet you are. Losing the same battles over and over again, bumbling and fumbling and stumbling your way through life. Overlooked, unappreciated, dismissed. You’re mild-mannered Clark Kent in a superhero world. Nobody sees who you are on your way to becoming.

Newsflash, God specializes in weak-shaming.

First, he goes into the junkpile and finds the most unlikely materials and says, “I’m going to make something beautiful.” Next, he takes his chisel and chips away all the hard edges and smooths and grinds out all the rough spots. It takes some doing, but he gets us there.

All the patrons of the ages will see it and know they’re witnessing a miracle. They are hushed by the pure poetry of sight in graceful curves and righteous detail. The glory of the Artist shines through and they can’t be in the same room with all that glory; they know they don’t belong there. They bow and take their exit.

If I could tell you that you are one of the lyrics in God’s Epic Poem or a statue in his gallery you’d be happy as a pig in mud. Well, you are, right along with all us other weak sauce saints. Right now its all rough draft, but I know the publishing date is set and the unveiling is scheduled and your scars and embarrassments and deficiencies will make sense on That Day. There’s rhyme and reason for it all. Just you wait and see.

I can’t wait.

———————————————————————

1 1 Corinthians 1:26-27, Common English Bible

2 The Preacher’s Commentary, Dr. Stuart Briscoe, New Testament, Mark 2, Ministry of Hope

3 The Greek word for workmanship in Ephesians 2:10 is poiema.

Timothy Keller asks “Do you know what it means that you are God’s workmanship? What is art? Art is beautiful, art is valuable, and art is an expression of the inner being of the maker, of the artist. Imagine what that means. You’re beautiful, you’re valuable, and you’re an expression of the very inner being of the Artist, the divine Artist, God Himself. You see, when Jesus gave Himself on the Cross, He didn’t say, “I’m going to die just so you know I love you.” He said, “I’m going to die, I’m going to bleed, for your splendor. I’m going to re-create you into something beautiful. I will turn you into something splendid, magnificent. I’m the Artist; you’re the art. I’m the Painter; you’re the canvas. I’m the Sculptor; you’re the marble. You don’t look like much there in the quarry, but I can see. Oh, I can see!” Jesus is an Artist!” And you beloved are His crowning achievement, His masterpiece! (Precept Austin)

Call Me Ephraim

image

Genesis 41:51-52

Joseph named his older son Manasseh, for he said, “God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in my father’s family.” Joseph named his second son Ephraim, for he said, “God has made me fruitful in this land of my grief.”

First off, let’s recognize the great white whale in the room.

Life is unfairly hard.

{Agreed.}

Yet God is deliberately good and kind.

There’s a well-known story in the Written Word that goes like this: a younger son is lost in a far country and father dutifully waits for his return. At long last when the day of reunion comes, father falls on his long-lost son’s neck and weeps for joy after which a grand family party ensues.

You know the tune.

Or at least you think you do.

This particular plot is found in the Old Testament not the New. It’s about Joseph, who, by character and demeanor, is a far cry from that other young son who actually chose the far country.

Let’s briefly recap Joseph’s story in the light of that famous chestnut ‘bad things happen to good people’ as it easily applies here.

Young Joseph has a quality his sibling brothers do not share and their father recognizes it and dresses him in a special robe. The Hebrew doesn’t have to mean multi-colored, it can mean long-sleeved. At any rate, it was fit for a prince among tribesmen, and the brothers hated him for it; that, and those self-serving made-up dreams.

They concoct a scheme to kill him off, but Judah steps in and, ostensibly out of some measure of mercy for the lad, edits the storyline to look like a killing when, in actuality, they sell off their brother to a migratory tribe. The final nail involved dipping the blasted coat in animal blood and – Oscar-worthily – presenting it most forlornly to their inconsolable father.

Meanwhile, Joseph, after being sold yet again, lands on his feet by the sheer grace of God. He gets a gig managing the household of the head-dude of Pharaoh’s security detail!

Now, if I’m writing the story, I’m going to exact poetic justice right away. I’m going to have Joseph quickly rising through the ranks and becoming da man in Egypt. His brothers would be sorry, especially when Emperor Joe sent an insertion team into Canaan-land to extract his siblings and throw them at the foot of his throne of justice.

But that’s just me.

We know that God holds the pen, however, and He’s got some things to redeem out of Joseph before He can move on with His ultimate plan.

God doesn’t want Joseph to even toy with the ideas of retribution and payback. He can’t have His man gloating or dismissive. He needs him to be His savior even to the very ones who despised him!

That’s how God writes it.

Joseph’s very cush world gets upended when the boss’s wife cries “rape!” after her repeated (re: daily) attempts to seduce the teenage boy go unrequited, and he suddenly becomes the target of the adage hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Hello hell-hole prison.

For thirteen long, dark, harrowing years.

Forsaken? Forgotten? For what?

▶️ The good son.

▶️ The trusted employee.

▶️ The innocent charge.

You’d think he’d emerge from prison poisoned by bitterness with bloodlustful payback on his mind. Or, at the very least, go to his grave with unyielding unforgiveness brewing his tempest in a teapot. And you’d guess wrong.

Case in point (and I’m skipping over a lot of really cool poetic justice here): Joseph, sentence miraculously commuted, settles into life, settles down with a beautiful bride, and starts a family. Life’s good.

He is given two sons, and the very naming of them speaks volumes of his understanding how life is supposed to work when trust trumps blame and compliance bests complaint.

Joseph insists his firstborn be called “folly forgotten” and his second, “fruitful hardship”. Imagine! James M. Boice points out the order had to be thus for

“no one can really be fruitful until the past is forgotten in the proper sense. If we are living in the past, whether that is the past of unconfessed sin, hurts, suffering, or even old blessings, we will never be completely fruitful in the present. We must let the past be the past, forgetting it, and go on with God.”

It’s the name of the second-born (Ephraim) I’d like to comment on because it’s so my own story.

In each decade since my early 20’s I’ve faced death in one way or another. Some decades brought me to the brink more than once.

Most recently I was spirited from my home in the middle of the night by EMT’s who couldn’t find vital signs. I was septic, dehydrated, losing vision, and barely responsive. Later I’d be told I got to the ER in barely enough time or we’d be looking at a far different outcome. I didn’t ask what that meant but I have a good idea.

I’m in my mid-fifties and this is the third time in this half-decade God’s miraculously preserved my life, I can only presume, for more ‘preservation of life.’1 There are still some assignments ahead for me.

As a 21-year old I prayed, “Lord, put me in a fire and don’t ever let up.” As such, suffering has been the mark of my life – AND I WOULDNT CHANGE A THING. Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I’ve found a depth of intimacy with Christ I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Like Joseph, I want the product of my life to tell the story that I’m doubly blessed and fruitful from all my afflictions, and God has been doubly kind to allow me the privilege of suffering for His glory and name.

This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all my life long:

  • Praise God for loss.
  • Praise God for the fire.
  • Praise God for heart-brokenness.
  • Praise God for weakness.
  • Praise God for humility.
  • Praise God for the tough times.
  • Praise God for the sweetness of the fruit that grows from the soil of hardship.

If any of this sounds weird, it’s only because I’m trying to live up to my name. You can call me Ephraim.

1 Genesis 45:5,7