Strength from Weakness

ONLINE REFLECTION, PROPER 6, YEAR A, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY

JUNE 14, 2020

TEXT:   June 5:1-8

Collect of the Day

On occasion, I walk a half-marathon.  Walk, not run – 13.1 miles. I have done six, thus far.  I generally do it as a fund raiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

While I don’t have a precise regimen, I build my mileage as the race approaches.  My usual walk is 2.5 miles.  As the races gets closer, I will be walking eight miles.

It makes 13.1 miles seem a lot shorter.

The message is that strength builds on strength.

People who lift weights know the principle.  In order to build muscle mass, the body must strain against resistance. So, someone who is beginning weight-lifting starts with light weights.  Someone who is more experienced has graduated to heavier weights.

Time, effort, and energy produce greater strength.  In a sense, practice makes perfect.  Or, at least, practice produces resilience.

That is what Paul is writing about in today’s New Testament lesson from his Letter to the Romans.  In his words:

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 

Paul did not see senselessness in the suffering that he and other Christians faced.  Suffering brings endurance; endurance brings character; character brings hope – and hope does not disappoint.

I would suggest that is a helpful way to view the present time.  The challenges we face can prepare us for greater challenges.  In facing the pandemic, we find new ways of being people of God.  In facing the economic downturn, we become more frugal and more free to share with those who are not as blessed.  In facing the political and social changes, we move toward what our founders called “a more perfect union.”

Today’s challenges may seem unique.  They are not. Christians have been building endurance, character, and hope on experience for many years – even from biblical times.