When You Are Weak Go To Church

Last updated on: October 23, 2016 at 6:37 am by Anne Kennedy

When You Are Weak Go To Church 2016-10-23T06:37:46-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I’ve written before about how Saturday nights are often a great trial. This isn’t something I would have noticed if I had never had children. But once Elphine was born we immediately were able to see that she could sleep beautifully every night of the week except Saturday night. If she were going to cut a tooth, or have a growth spurt, or just be out of sorts, she would do it on a Saturday. And so on down the line. You add children, you multiply the possibility of a sorrowing Saturday night.

Indeed, as soon as we moved in here, even though none of the children are technically babies, however they may act, right away on Saturday night we had a bat flying around the house, making it impossible for us to go to bed. Now we have bats all the time but somehow they figure out how to make their own way out.

Anyway, I’m sure this happens whatever kind of job you’re in. If you are a teacher and Monday is the most important day of your work, I would put three five cent pieces down that the whole household would be disrupted and not sleep on Sunday night. Or if you are a very high powered executive and you need all your six children (is that how many you have?) to sleep on Wednesday before your multimillion dollar deal on Thursday, I bet they won’t sleep.

And once they’ve woken you up, of course you don’t just drop right back off. You lie there and fret and feel anxious as the minutes slip by, because when you’re tired because you haven’t slept there’s a particular kind of weakness that takes over you.

You go along in a fog, a haze of forgetfulness. Your reaction times might not be even a little bit up to snuff. As you watch the time for sleep tick away, you know you’re in for it, that the weakness characterized by night wakefulness will mean a day full of apologies and personal failures.

Why would God do this? I ask, often, even when I am blaming Satan. Because I know that my particular Saturday trials are all because Satan doesn’t want us to go to church, doesn’t want the sermon to be preached, doesn’t want me to be on my toes, ready to snatch at any moment to speak about Jesus to small children, doesn’t want me to be ready to encourage and build up, heck, doesn’t want the coffee to be good. Because Satan hates God and hates me.

But what of God? He doesn’t hate me and he has commanded me to go to church. So what gives? Why not ensure that all babies everywhere sleep all through Saturday night? Why not arrange for Elphine to bash here toe on Friday night so that when she can’t get to sleep from the pain but then finally drops off, she can sleep in? Why God!? Why?

If you know and love Jesus you already know the answer. It’s stupidly simple and awful.
Paul writes, “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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I myself like to spiritualize this. See, I’m spiritually weak, and of course I’m human and I’m not God, so…I self talk while applying killer make up, high heals, and matching my nail polish to my awesome handbag. I absolutely don’t want to give off a whiff of personal weakness in a room full of other people who appear to be very strong. The physical sensation of weakness–of not having your stuff together, not having your mind and heart in order, not being able to move your body in the direction you think it should go, losing the single phone number of the one person you promised to call, running out of time and not being able to carry through on a promise–well, it’s a little bit humiliating. And that’s why God is fine with it.

Because he doesn’t want a sanctuary full of people projecting their strength and goodness to each other. He isn’t interested in you impressing your neighbor. He wants you to arrive in your pew exhausted and shattered, ready to melt down, anxious about all the things, unhappy with reality and with yourself. Not because he doesn’t love you, but because that’s who you spiritually are. You are not good enough and smart enough and not have it enough together to earn a place in his presence.

And that’s good because you’re not supposed to. Heaven is a gift to you. The body and blood is a gift to you. The word is a gift to you. Not one that you merit, but one that God gives graciously to the broken, contrite, and weak. As you sit there, struggling with yourself, he is there too, ready to put you back together, ready to give sleep at the proper time (not during the sermon), ready to build up, encourage, and yes, even to strengthen…with himself.

But not strengthen so much that you can stop depending, stop swallowing the various humiliating failures, stop leaning on his goodness and his strength.

Notice Paul says, when you are weak then you are strong. Your weakness is the best and most felicitous place because you are not at that moment even able to contemplate relying on yourself. You have to collapse on the strength of God’s mercy. You don’t have the energy to do something stupidly self reliant. And so your whole self is in an excellent position to glorify God because his strength is so obviously keeping you alive. The strength that you find you have is so obviously not yours but his that no one, not even you, is confused or mistaken.

So drag yourself up and go. If you come to Good Shepherd I’ll be staggering around the kitchen in a total stupor.

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