The Blessing of Weakness

“No drop but serves the slowly lifting tide, No dew but has an errand to some flower, No smallest star but sheds some helpful ray.”

WE are not accustomed to think of weakness as a condition of blessing. We would say, “Blessed is strength. Blessed are the strong.” But Bible beatitudes are usually the reverse of what nature would say. “Blessed are they that mourn.” “Blessed are the meek.” “Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you.” The law of the cross lies deep in spiritual life. It is by the crucifying of the flesh that the spirit grows into beauty. So, “Blessed are the weak, for they shall have God’s strength,” is a true scriptural beatitude, although its very words are not found in the Bible.

Weakness is blessed because it insures to us more of the sympathy and help of Christ. Weakness ever appeals to a gentle heart. We see illustrations of this truth in our common human life. What can be more weak and help less than blindness? Here is a blind child in a home. Her condition seems pitiable. She gropes about in darkness. She is unaware of dangers that may beset her, and cannot shield herself from any harm that threatens her. The windows through which others see the world to her are closed, and she is shut up in darkness. She is almost utterly helpless. Yet her very weakness is her strength. It draws to it self the best love and help of the whole household. The mother’s heart has no such tender thought for any of the other children as for the blind girl. The father carries her continually in his affection and is ever doing gentle things for her. Brothers and sisters strive in all ways to supply her lack. The result is that no other member of the family is sheltered so safely as she is, and that none is half so strong. Her very helplessness is the secret of her strength. Her closed eyes and outstretched hands and tottering feet appeal resistlessly to all who love her, inspiring them to thought and help, as do the strength and winning grace of no other one in the household.

This illustrates also the special divine thought and care for the weak. All the best things in human life are really hints and gleams of the divine life. The heart of Christ goes out in peculiar interest toward the weak. Paul could well afford to keep his “thorn” with its burdening weakness, because it made him far more the object of divine sympathy and help. So always weakness makes strong appeal to the divine compassion. We think of suffering or feebleness as a misfortune. It is not altogether so, however, if it makes us dearer and brings us nearer to the heart of Christ. Blessed is weakness, for it draws to itself the strength of God.

Weakness is blessed, also, because it saves from spiritual peril. St. Paul tells us that his “thorn” was given to him to keep him humble. Without it he would have been exalted over much and would have lost his spirituality. We do not know how much of his deep insight into the things of God, and his power in service for his Master, St. Paul owed to this torturing “thorn.” It seemed to hinder him and it caused him incessant suffering, but it detained him in the low valley of humility, made him ever conscious of his own weakness and insufficiency, and thus kept him near to Christ whose home is with the humble.

Spiritual history is full of similar cases. Many of God’s noblest servants have carried “thorns” in their flesh all their days, but meanwhile they have had spiritual blessings and enrichment which they never would have had if their cries for relief had been granted. We do not know what we owe to the sufferings of those who have gone before us. Prosperity has not enriched the world as adversity has done. The best thoughts, the richest life lessons, the sweetest songs that have come down to us from the past, have not come from lives that have known no privation, no adversity, but are the fruits of pain, of weakness, of trial. Men have cried out for emancipation from the bondage of hardship, of sickness, of infirmity, of self-denying necessity; not knowing that the thing which seemed to be hindering them in their career was the very making of whatever was noble, beautiful, and blessed in their life.

There are few people who have not some “thorn” rankling in their flesh. In one it is an infirmity of speech, in another an infirmity of sight, in another an infirmity of hearing. Or it may be lameness, or a disease, slow but incurable, or constitutional timidity, or excessive nervousness, or a disfiguring bodily deformity, or an infirmity of temper. Or it may be in one’s home, which is cold, unloving, and uncongenial; or it may be in the life of a loved one — sorrow or moral failure; or it may be a bitter personal disappointment through untrue friendship or love unrequited. Who has not his “thorn “?

We should never forget that in one sense our “thorn” is a “messenger of Satan,” who de sires by it to hurt our life, to mar our peace, to spoil the divine beauty in us, to break our communion with Christ. On the other hand, however, Christ himself has a loving design in our “thorn.” He wants it to be a blessing to us. He would have it keep us humble, save us from becoming vain; or he means it to soften our hearts and make us more gentle. He would have the uncongenial things in our environment discipline us into heavenly-mindedness, give us greater self-control, help us to keep our hearts loving and sweet amid harshness and unlovingness. He would have our pain teach us endurance and patience, and our sorrow and loss teach us faith.

That is, our “thorn” may either be a blessing to us, or it may do us irreparable harm — which, it depends upon ourselves. If we allow it to fret us; if we chafe, resist, and complain; if we lose faith and lose heart, it will spoil our life. But if we accept it in the faith that in its ugly burden it has a blessing for us; if we endure it patiently, submissively, unmurmuringly; if we seek grace to keep our heart gentle and true amid all the trial, temptation, and suffering it causes, it will work good, and out of its bitterness will come sweet fruit. The responsibility is ours, and we should so relate ourselves to our “thorn” and to Christ, that growth and good, not harm and marring, shall come to us from it. Such weakness is blessed only if we get the victory over it through faith in Christ.

There is a blessing in weakness, also, be cause it nourishes dependence on God. When we are strong, or deem ourselves strong, we are really weak, since then we trust in our selves and do not seek divine help. But when we are consciously weak, knowing ourselves unequal to our duties and struggles, we arc strong, because then we turn to God and get his strength. Too many people think their weakness a barrier to their usefulness, or make it an excuse for doing little with their life. Instead of this, however, if we give it to Christ, he will transform it into strength. He says his strength is made perfect in weakness; that is, what is wanting in human strength he fills and makes up with divine strength. St. Paul had learned this when he said he gloried now in his weaknesses, because on account of them the strength of Christ rested upon him, so that, when he was weak, then he was strong — strong with divine strength.

The people who have done the greatest good in the world, who have left the deepest, most abiding impression upon the lives of others, have not been those whom men called the strong. Much of the world’s best work has been done by the weak, by those with broken lives. Successful men have piled up vast fortunes, established large enterprises, or won applause in some material way; but the real influence that has made the world better, enriched lives, taught men the lessons of love, and sweetened the springs of society, has come largely, not from the strong, but from the weak.

I walked over a meadow and the air was full of delicious fragrance. Yet I could see no flowers. There was tall grass waving on all sides, but the fragrance did not come from the grass. Then I parted the grass and looked beneath it, and there, close to the earth, hidden out of sight by the showy growths in the meadow, were multitudes of lowly little flowers. I had found the secret of the sweetness — it poured out from these humble hiding flowers. This is a picture of what is true everywhere in life. Not from the great, the conspicuous, the famed in any community, comes the fragrance which most sweetens the air, but from lowly lives, hidden, obscure, unpraised, which give out the aroma of unselfishness, of kindness, of gentleness. In many a home it is from the room of an invalid, a sufferer, that the sweetness comes which fills all the house. We know that it is from the cross of Christ that the hallowing influence flowed which all these centuries has been refining and enriching and softening the world’s life. So it is always — out of weakness and suffering, and from crushed, broken lives, comes the blessing that renews and heals the world.

‘• The healing of the world
Is in its nameless saints.”

We need only to make sure of one thing, that we do indeed bring our weakness to Christ and lean on him in simple faith. This is the vital link in getting the blessing. Weakness itself is a burden; it is chains upon our limbs. If we try to carry it alone we shall only fail. But if we lay it on the strong Son of God and let him carry us and our burden, going on quietly and firmly in the way of duty, he will make our very weakness a secret of strength. He will not take the weakness from us — that is not his promise — but he will so fill it with his own power that we shall be strong, more than conquerors, able to do all things through Christ who strengtheneth us.

It is a blessed secret — this of having our burdening weakness transformed into strength. The secret can be found only in Christ, but in him it can be found by every lowly, trusting disciple.