In late elementary school I was on a camping trip with some R.A.’s (Royal Ambassadors, kinda like the Baptist version of boy scouts). We were all excited and going to an overnight camp at Camp Ba-Yo-Ca (a clever 1958 name for Ba-ptist Yo-uth Ca-mp). Interestingly, this sounded to me a little like Kum ba ya, an old Gullah song, made popular at youth camps in the 1950’s and 60’s. The camp was in the East Tennessee mountains and had old fashioned bunk cabins and a lake (which a cousin ended up in somehow in her sleeping bag on a Girls In Action or GA’s trip on another occasion). It also had a fire pit!!! These are boy magnets for poking with a flaming stick, making s’mores, and heating rocks! This all in spite of the adults warning that “If you play in the fire, you will wet the bed!” We arrived late afternoon on Friday so the Dad leaders could get off work to come lead the camp. As the evening progressed with dinner and games and Bible Study, I started feeling pretty lousy. I had an earache, my throat hurt, my head hurt. I was miserable, but I was determined to make it through. Our new pastor had driven the hour and a half to come lead a Bible Study at the fireside and I knew there would be fun hikes and games the next day. One of the Dads saw me fading fast when I couldn’t even make a s’more. He found a phone in the cafeteria to call my Mom (this was back in the day of only landlines, nearly 4 decades before cell phones). By this time I was chilling with fever spikes, so my friend’s Dad drove me home. I was so disappointed at first, but relieved to know I could sleep in my own bed, get some TLC from my Mom, and medicine from my Doctor, who also happened to be my Dad, who was on call and not able to go to the camp. Sometimes, regardless of our determination, we just can’t make it through… we need God’s mercy, grace and provision. If we could do everything by sheer determination of our will, we may think we have no need for God, that we can do it all ourselves. Sometimes God entrusts us with more than we can handle on our own, so we can stay better connected with Him. He is always God-with-us, but we sometimes need to be reminded Who we belong to.
The Apostle Paul was a very determined and driven religious man. He was a scholar, “a Pharisee descended from Pharisees,”(Acts 23:6) and a fierce defender of what he thought was right. Today, he would be considered a type A personality. He had endured many hardships and survived shipwrecks, and beatings. He had first encountered Christ in a very dramatic way and seen amazing things in the heavenly realms. He could have become arrogant because of all he had experienced and accomplished. But God knows our tendencies… to take credit for His work when He entrusts us with exceptional experiences, so, sometimes He also has to entrust us with challenges to keep us in right relationship with Him. Paul, as he wrestles with his own arrogance, says to those in the early church, “Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “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.” (2 Corinthians 12:6–10) So, the next time God entrusts us with a great experience and He also entrusts us with a failure, in spite of our fierce determination, we need to remember that in our weakness, Christ’s power rests on us. Christ can be exalted when we are humbled. He assures us “my grace is sufficient for you…”
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
