How weak are you?
God works with an open heart not a closed mind. These words came to me the other night as I was in bed. There is something tender and gentle about an open heart. There is something rigid and stern about a closed mind. I don’t know about you but there have been times in my life when I’ve had a closed mind that I that thought I was being strong. There are those times when I had an open heart that I sensed I was being weak. Must be fear.
My spiritual director reminds me that tar trees are very rigid and appear strong, while bamboo appears gentle, yet it is the tar trees that snap like toothpicks during a storm and the bamboo that remains standing. His says theology is a lot like that as well. Have any rigid and stern ideas about God? Life is a lot like that too. When we think we are strong we are usually weak and when we seem weak it is often when we are strong. I did not say weakling, I said weak in the same sense of God choosing to enter the world in a weak manner… gentle and tender through the heartbeat of a child.
The fact that God dared to be vulnerable in the life of a baby is a great lesson for me when I want to be rigid, strong, closed-minded, and powerful. That same baby grew up to be a man who washed his friends feet. Gentle and tender, yet owning all the power in the world. I am not weak enough to follow his example.
There is a myth in this world that the way to transformation is through power—being rigid and stern. The reality is, when I am rigid and stern and appear strong that I am on the verge of breaking at then first storm. When my mind is closed, perhaps I am on the verge of being snapped in half at the next storm. It is when I am tender and gentle that my heart is open and able to receive God. It is when I come into my powerlessness that storms cease to destroy and break me.
Henri Nouwen says that a theology of weakness is a theology of divine empowering.
How are you doing? Where are you rigid and stern? Where is your heart tender and open? I need to examine my heart... and my head.
1 Comments:
So true... I remember watching a friend's five year old daughter fall down a flight of stairs. I was alaremed and came around to see if she was all right. By the time I reached the house, she was running around playing. I asked her mom, who reminded me that children when they fall let themselves go, relax and curl up as a ball instinctively and so don't get hurt. Unlike adults who try to break the fall and put out arms and legs and end up with broken limbs. Adds more truth to the "let the children come unto me..." idea... "Oh Lord, may I be a child all over again."
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