living with thorns - Summer Saldana

So, get this. I’ve been in this funk today.
Probably just pregnancy hormones gone wild, but I am feeling blue regardless, and it doesn’t feel so good.
I got into bed wondering if anxiety was just minutes away and pulled out my book to do my bible reading.
I had to share what I read, because I know that we are all seeming to be going through something right now.
My prayer is that this gives you all hope as it has me…

Paul’s imagery is to the point – literally – when he describes the “thorn in my flesh” that was given to torment him. Although we don’t know the specifics of the thorn, the metaphor makes us squirm with understanding. Whatever plagued him was a painful, ongoing trial. When I’m worrying over some frustration with myself or my circumstances, I imagine my misfortune as a brier and seek comfort in Paul’s, and God’s, words. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

As one person put it, “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest place.”
When I am the weakest and most desperately in need of help, God is most free to give it.
When I let him, God works my circumstances or my self into something good.

Paul is describing one of the paradoxes of life: A painful thorn bringing good?
How could a weakness in me, or a painful circumstance over which I’m powerless, bring me delight?
It seems a nice, church idea that would never survive outside sanctuary doors.

Author and speaker Brennan Manning found the truth of this principle after becoming an alcoholic, losing his home and job, and finally landing on the street.

“Probably the moment in my own life when I was closest to the Truth who is Jesus Christ, was the experience of being a hopeless derelict in the gutter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In his novel The Moviegoer, Walker Percy says: ‘Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in the ditch.’ Paradoxically, such an experience of powerlessness does not make one sad. It is a great relief because it makes us rely not on our own strength but in the limitless power of God. The realization that God is the main agent makes the yoke easy, the burden light, and the heart still.”

Each of us struggles with our own personal thorn.
We can shut God out and continue to fail, or we can let his power fill the thorn-shaped wound within.
When God fills our wound, he engages us in a profoundly loving and satisfying relationship with himself.
Delight becomes possible.

Psychologist Larry Crabb describes it this way: “We rarely learn to meaningfully depend on God when our lives are comfortable….The entire fabric of Scripture is woven with the thread of relationship. God longs for us to give our heart to Him. He loves us. To the degree that we embrace our thirst and realize who He is, we long for Him. There is nothing dull about the romance between our heavenly Bridegroom and His hurting but fickle bride. The more honestly we face whatever may be locked inside, the more passionately we can be drawn to the beauty of a Lover who responds consistently with all the tender strength our heart desires.”

-Brenda Quinn

Contemplation:
What thorn is causing you pain? Have you asked God to remove it? Have you asked him to fill your wound with his power, to replace your weakness with his strength? Talk to him about your struggle. Ask for his help in letting go so you can let him take over.