Exasperated with feeling weak and unsuccessful, I grumbled under my breath about the project I was working on. This project had called me to a vulnerable place. I had put myself “out there” and had utilized all my creative energy. I was spiritually, mentally, and physically depleted, but the project wasn’t.

My husband gently encouraged me to embrace my humanity and the weakness found in it. In my muttering tantrum, I didn’t initially want to consider that as a possibility.

I was forced to consider that encouragement over the next weeks, though. Just a few days later, I found myself unexpectedly caring for a paraplegic cat. One of our beloved outdoor cats suddenly stopped walking. He needed help moving, eating, emptying himself, and bathing. Daniel Tiger is our beautiful, wild, long-haired cat. He rarely comes in unless we make him on the coldest, most bitter of winter nights. Danny Boy, as we also call him, goes on long journeys through the woods, climbs to the top of our barn, and makes friends with wild animals. He’s tough as nails, but also a lover. You can imagine, then, how hard it is to see this once-robust cat suddenly only be able to scoot himself across this land he once owned by only his front legs. It’s a pitiful scene to behold.

Over the past weeks, this wild, loving cat has become simply a purring responder to my love and care. He’s no longer wild. He doesn’t run away anymore; he looks to me for everything and he purrs when I give it.

As I’ve cared for him, I wonder what I can see in this picture of weakness. Sitting with the weak cat of need, I process my own weakness, my humanity.

Why would I want to embrace this weakness I see in myself? Why would my husband encourage me to do that?

I know that in my humanity, I need rescue at times. In those moments, the loss of control and the increase of weakness provokes me to fear.

What if the loss of control and weakness are opportunities for something, though? What if they are opportunities for a better strength outside of myself, rescue, experiencing love, responding in gratefulness, and faith?

I’m reading the book of Mark as I go through this process with Daniel Tiger and consider the weakness and embracing of my humanity. I hit Mark chapter four:

“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”  And leaving the crowd,  they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the  cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and  rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to  them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”  And they were filled with great fear and said to one another,  “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Mark 4:35-41 ESV

I’ve often wondered why Jesus rebuked the disciples. Of course they were afraid! I mean, they were about to die it seemed and Jesus was sleeping with His head on pillow!

Wait–is that just it? Is this the key to embracing weakness? Bucking the knee-jerk reaction of assuming that God doesn’t care?

What would Jesus have wanted them to do differently?

He had been with them so long. What had he done when there was a need?

Did he yell at His father and ask why there was no food to feed the multitudes? No, he prayed over the loaves of bread and fishes.

He faithfully prayed in that situation and countless others.

Flash forward and He is in the Garden of Gethsemane and He prays that the Father would provide some other way for the sin problem.

And there was a man who came after Jesus, but dramatically changed by Jesus on the Damascus road. Paul, convinced of and intimately aware of His union with Christ, prayed when the thorns of life exasperated him.

Instead of shaking His fist, He prayed.

Paul’s insistent and repeated prayers were not answered as he had hoped. And Jesus’ prayers in the Garden were not answered as He had longed for them to be answered.

So I wonder again. Why embrace that kind of weakness? What’s the point?

Ah, the Christian paradox; the upside-down world of the bible is about to turn and make sense to my heart and mind.

Paul said, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Weakness drove Paul to pray, yes. And it drove Jesus to pray in the Garden as He faced death. And those unanswered prayers resulted in God’s power to work in their fleshly lives.

“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 12:10, ESV

Paul’s prayer was not answered in the way he had hoped, yet He was able to put the power of god on display instead of his own. In his suffering, the strength of God was made known.

And couldn’t we say much more so in Jesus’ life? For it is in Jesus’ seemingly weakest moment that the power of the resurrection came.

When we are weak then we are strong in the grace of our Lord. When we see weakness, we go out of ourselves to Christ and receive His strength and enablement to carry out our most difficult moments. Whether we are rescued from a particular thing or not, we are always rescued by being enabled to respond with faith or we are rescued to be with Christ forever.

“Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
 He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.”

Isaiah 40:28-29 NIV

Isn’t Christ being made nothing (Philippians 2:6-7) what we as Christians celebrate at Christmas? God coming as a baby, in a stable, dependent on a mother, dwelling in the flesh to endure a shameful death for our sakes.

While Jesus was not completely powerless, He showed us what it looked like to be dependent on the Father and He limited himself in a unique way when He came in the flesh, especially as a baby.

These words from the Christmas carol, In the Bleak Midwinter, by Christina Rosetti are floating through my mind lately. I run through them often as I prepare to sing it with a friend in church this month. It reminds me of the realities of our powerful and mighty God the Son denying Himself by making himself nothing and coming to the spiritually cold earth.

“Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.”

Christina Rossetti

If Christ became nothing for us, shall we embrace our own sort of weaknesses for His glory?

“Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:6-11 NIV

We celebrate this movement of Christ to the flesh because of the paradox we know of. That it is in the lowering of oneself, that the power of the gospel of grace is born. The sure transfer of our sin to Christ and His perfect life to us is made.

Are you experiencing weakness right now of any kind?

Today as I post this, I also must put down Daniel Tiger. When I first started writing this post, I thought he might make it. As the week has gone on, it’s become clear he will not. I am weak, my friends. I’m striving to seek the Lord in my frail moment so that I don’t respond to life in an agitated and angry way. I am seeking to remain faithful to Him despite this and other items swirling around me right now. I’m moving toward receiving and experiencing the Lord’s care and love instead of pushing Him away. Maybe you have a storm of challenges in your life right now during this busy season.

Will you trust the Lord’s goodness or will you wonder if he’s only resting his head on a pillow as your boat is tossed to and fro?

No need to wonder, we have the story of what he has already done for us.

I love these words by Ross Douthit in his piece in the New York Times called Loss of the Innocents. In it, he tried to make sense of evil and suffering after the tragic shootings of young children in Newtown, Connecticut about nine years ago. It’s a wonderful reminder of how, in this weak and sin-sick world, there is strength coming from the cross beyond the nativity.

“But the Christmas story isn’t just the manger and the shepherds and the baby Jesus, meek and mild.

The rage of Herod is there as well, and the slaughtered innocents of Bethlehem, and the myrrh that prepares bodies for the grave. The cross looms behind the stable — the shadow of violence, agony and death.

In the leafless hills of western Connecticut, this is the only Christmas spirit that could possibly matter now.”

Ross Douthat, Loss of the Innocents, December 15, 2012

Will you join me in considering the strength of Christ in our weakness and putting trust in the God who cares? One way you can do that is through meditating on the implications of the incarnation, Christ coming in the flesh.

Here is a link to an Advent devotional I wrote called Beyond the Nativity. It’s available now for $.99 as an Amazon Kindle book! Each of the twenty devotionals reveals an image of a historical painting of the nativity!

Beyond the Nativity, Implications of the Incarnation

Have a blessed Christmas contemplating Christ coming in the flesh.

 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John 1:14 ESV

 I’m linking up with these awesome bloggers over the next week!

Inspire Me Monday