Further thoughts on weakness from Psalm 6
“for I am weak”
“for I am languishing” ESV
Weakness is a hard pill to swallow. I don’t want weakness. I don’t want to admit weakness. To be honest, I fear weakness. Weakness has many meanings and levels. Physical weakness, mental weakness, a breaking point, a propensity to give in under load. I am under load.
Come to me
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
for I will refresh the weary soul and replenish all who are weak."
Jeremiah 31:25
Being weak feels like a shame. It feels like you will be judged. You don’t take care of yourself well enough. You try to do too much. You don’t eat well enough. You eat too much. You don’t exercise enough. You don’t know how to rest. You … blah blah blah blah blah.
I don’t know, maybe we do flex our weaknesses in modern society but it seems silly. People are silly. Usually we are proud of our strengths.
As I read Psalm 6 I hear a stream of weakness. And you might think I’m being negative and only focusing on the negative side, but the positive side is there too, right?
Well Paul says things on the subject that make me think you can’t go overboard with the whole weakness focus.
9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I wish I could say I am excited to read this. But to be honest I’m feeling pretty weak right now. And I don’t want to hear this message. I just want the healing part. I want to be made strong. I want to be impressive. But at this very moment I’d settle for just nearly adequate. I’m not sure I am in the mental space of David. I don’t want to blame God for my weakness. I take responsibility for being weak. I feel the blame. But I’m not worried about God’s rage or discipline. I’m convinced He has compassion for me and that He can heal me, restore me and rescue me. I have faith. But I fear, maybe that isn’t the right word, fear. I mean to say I am resolved to be weak. I suppose I am. But I’m not a ‘glory in my weakness’ freak like Paul. At least not yet.
I’m thinking out loud here and wondering with a keyboard, but could Psalm 6 be saying the same thing as Paul in 2 Corinthians? Does David make a song out of his struggles to show us that he is weak? And to showcase God’s power? When I was reading the Psalms last year specifically looking for Jesus, I kept seeing weaknesses. I found them a distraction. Now I’m wondering if all the fear, depression, anger, emotional flare ups and mental uncertainty I saw was to shift our focus from making a hero of the psalmist to seeing God. And then I’m confronted with this thought: even Jesus was weak. In the garden, with the soldiers, on the cross. These scenes are a real mixed bag just like David in Psalm 6. On one hand you might see a weak Jesus praying in the garden and on the other hand you might see a triumph of power, honesty and strength of character. And can’t the same be said for David in Psalm 6. Are these moments of wrestling written into poems and songs meant to show us how to be weak and dependent? More than once I have been rebuked, particularly by my lady African believer friends for talking about weakness. There is a cult of thinking that will not glory in weakness. There is a strain of current (maybe it's been that way all the time) Christianity that fears cursing yourself by negative thinking or prophesying defeat over yourself or family by admitting weakness. Because you know we are more than overcomers and blah blah blah. But Jesus and David admit weakness and Paul, he’s downright giddy over his weakness. But me, I’m a bit lukewarm about it. I’m resolved to accept being weak but I don’t like it and I’m ashamed of it. When I confess it some of my Christian friends, maybe not only my African friends, get all concerned and try to heal me. Thanks. But I’m a bit Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh and figure, I suppose, that's the way it's going to be. I’m weak, so deal with it.
Today I’ve taken some sinus medicine and ibuprofen and drank water and got this off my chest a bit and I'll trudge through the day being weak. It isn’t likely to get better and I don’t have the umph to ask God to fix what I probably did to myself.
I like what William Carrey said: “I can plod.'' Today plodding seems more appropriate than “Attempt great things for God, expect great things from God.” He said that too, but that isn’t the motto of today.
Isn’t death the ultimate weakness? As I was just reflecting, I thought, Genk is a place bookended by death and so was my time in Chicago. Death, I’ve lost friends and family to the last enemy, and David brings that up in verse 5 of Psalm 6. See it was context and I wasn’t just being depressed and morose. But the fear of death isn’t so much the enemy but grief, decline, wearing out, losing mental and physical capabilities slowly or even unaware that you have slipped into dementia. That’s a harder pill to swallow and I have watched several people in my life walk that path. That’s a weakness I want rescuing from. But many great saints and heroes of the faith had to walk that path, why won’t I?
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