The Blessing of Weakness

It is not natural for us 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 the meek.”* (Matthew 5:5) “Blessed are ye, when men… shall reproach you.”* (Luke 6:22) 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.

Weakness is blessed, because it brings us nearer to the sympathy and help of Christ. Weakness ever appeals to a gentle, loving heart. We see illustrations of this truth in our common human life. 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 which threatens her. The windows through which others see the world are closed to her, and she is shut up in darkness. How weak and helpless she must be. Yet her very weakness is her strength. It draws to itself 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 greater thoughtfulness and helpfulness towards her than anyone else in the household.

This illustrates God’s special thought and care for the weak, for all that is noble and beautiful and good in human nature is, after all, but a dim reflection of the divine image. The heart of Christ goes out in special 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. Weakness always 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. Paul tells us that his thorn was given to him to keep him humble (2 Corinthians 12:7). 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, 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 (Isaiah 57:15).

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 blessing 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 truly noble, beautiful, and blessed in their life.

There are few people who have not some thorn rankling in their flesh. We easily take for granted all the physical and mental abilities normally given us—until they are withdrawn. One may be limited in speech, another in sight, and another in hearing. Some may be lame, and others even paralyzed. The infirmity may be some bodily deformity, or a dreadful disease, slow but unrelenting. It may be a weakness of the mind—a constitutional timidity, excessive nervousness, or an inability to relate in common social interactions. In another realm, the lack may be in one’s home, which is cold, unloving, and uncongenial; or it may be sorrow or moral failure in the life of a loved one; or it may be a bitter personal disappointment through untrue friendship or love unrequited. Who has not his “thorn”?

To be sure, human weakness of itself does not insure to us God’s strength, any more than human poverty insures God’s wealth. Every thorn is a “messenger of Satan,”* (2 Corinthians 12:7) who desires by it to hurt our life, to mar our peace, to spoil the divine beauty in us, to break our communion with Christ. But Christ is greater than our adversary, so we may rest in the unwavering assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God,”* (Romans 8:28) for He delights to manifest His glory through our joyful submission to His sovereign plan. Christ has a loving design in permitting our thorn to buffet us. He wants it to be a blessing to us. He would have it keep us humble, to 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.

Our thorn may be a great blessing to us—or it may do us irreparable harm. The difference 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.

“He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”* (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) There is a blessing in weakness, because it nourishes dependence on God. When we are strong, or deem ourselves strong, we are really weak, since then we trust in ourselves and do not seek divine help (Revelation 3:17). But when we are consciously weak, knowing ourselves unequal to our duties and struggles, then we are strong, because we turn to God and receive His strength.

Too many people think their weakness is 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, natural human strengths tend to thickly veil our vision of the divine, and thus our lack, our weakness, is the window of opportunity for God’s glory to enter in and fill us with His power. 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 of the divine upon the lives of others, have not been those whom the world called the strong. Much of the best work in our world has been done by the weak, the broken, the despised. “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.

“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”* (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

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 has 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 which renews and heals the world.

“The healing of the world
Is in its nameless saints.”1

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 source 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 strengthens us (Romans 8:37; Philippians 4:13)!

This is the blessed secret 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 humble, trusting disciple.