Being weak isn't weak, really!

Tonight I was suppose to be at worship practice, but I'm also on call at the hospital this week. Well, tonight just before worship practice, the hospital called, and I went.

I met with a man and his wife. He had just had emergency surgery, it was cancer. They wanted someone to pray with them and visit them awhile, so I did. 56 years together and they had no children. She made a point of communicating that to me . They were afraid, but at peace.

I then made a trip up to another room on the 4th floor to see a friend who is in advanced stages of Alzheimers. He was busy trying to remove the handrails, till I reminded him that they were there for people to hold on to while they walked. We returned to his room and prayed together a while. He had been growing uncomfortable in his wheelchair, and I was unable to help lift him up, so I went to get some help. The nurses knew just what to do to ease his discomfort.

Finally, I headed down into the care home part of the hospital. When I walk into that place I shrink in size and age mostly because it always takes me back to when I was a kid and we would go visit my great grandma. This home always reminds me of hers back in Warman.

Anyway, I went to check on an elderly lady from our church who is living out her years there. She was already in bed and mostly asleep, lights all on and an open book across her chest because she still loves to read. I prayed silently and left her to her dreams.

I drove home slowly through the darkness thinking how life ends like it begins. We enter this life needing help and support from other human beings. And we end it in much the same way, needing help and support from other human beings.

We spend our adult years being strong and independent, able to make our own choices and go where and do what we please. Then, before we know it, we need help again. Another human, another person willing to walk alongside us and help us as we leave.

Amazing to think that God made us to be this dependant on others. Amazing that while we have the strength, we fight that dependency, that "weakness" with all we've got.

We were created to need others, to depend and rely on them. Yet, to admit that we need others is seen as a weakness, a limitation.

Sad really, because God gives grace to the humble, the meek, the lowly. That's where his presence is the most profound, most amazing. We look with human eyes and see frail souls, ineffective and weak. God sees someone willing to listen, someone ready to receive his touch, his breath.

There is a lesson in there some place for us. A lesson to become as a little child maybe? A lesson not to esteem personal power and individualism as much as we do perhaps?

I'm not sure what it is for you, but for me it's that weakness isn't a weakness, it's a strength. I need to learn ways to live in that strength,  ... or should I say weakness?