Weakness

It has been facetiously suggested that everyone should carry a highway sign around with them that says, “Under Construction.” As an alternative I might suggest a more prayerful one, patterned after the plaque on my cluttered desk that reads, “Lord, Bless This Mess!” And hidden somewhere below the clutter is an acronym sign that I think of after my first hundred or so mistakes each morning; it reads: “PBPWMGIFWMY”--which of course stands for: “Please Be Patient With Me; God Isn’t Finished With Me Yet.”

Less discouraging than outright sinning, but perhaps even more common than sin, are the simple mistakes we make on a daily basis. These mistakes include things like tactless remarks, disastrous stock market investments, misspelled words, lapses in driving skills, checking account miscalculations, lost grocery lists, spilt milk, misplaced car keys or eyeglasses, burned toast, expired driver’s licenses, and empty bathroom tissue rolls.

With the psalmist, we must wonder what the faultless God really thinks of us in our failure-mottled lives. “What is man that you are mindful of him . . . that you care for him?” (Ps 8:4). With less interrogatory and more affirmative words, Peter quotes David’s advice from Psalm 55:22 regarding God’s care for us: “Cast all your anxiety on him, for he cares for you” (1 Pt 5:7). Under the aegis of God’s care, we must, without anxiety, truly trust him to help us somehow blunder our way to heaven, where failure is not a word in the celestial vocabulary. Yet in the process of getting there, we can do nothing more than trust that the Lord in his loving compassion will patiently disregard our missteps and exercise a kind of damage control--to use a political word--with the same mercy that drives him to disregard sins, once they’re repented of.

Reaction to our failures and weaknesses will, of course, be as varied as any human reaction to situations. Some people take their missteps far too seriously and keep themselves in a fever of self-recrimination and self-vilification, to the point where they lose proper self-esteem, thinking that denying one’s worth is only the way to holiness. Others, with a “so what?” attitude, give hardly a thought to their daily imperfections and mistakes. For those apathetic individuals who say, “Lord, you love me just the way I am,” heaven echoes with the Lord’s reply: “Yes, but I love you too much to leave you the way you are!”

Finally, there are those mature souls who acknowledge their weaknesses and defects with true humility and then surrender them sweetly, lovingly, and peacefully into the hands of God, in the same trust with which they expect him to keep their hearts beating while they sleep. These type of people advance daily closer to God while avoiding the pitfalls of religious recklessness on the one hand and religious masochism on the other. The closer they come to God in holiness, the more keenly they perceive their unworthiness. Yet, as the iron of their soul trustingly rests in the divine furnace of love, it grows from warm to hot to red-hot, then white-hot, and finally molten as it is penetrated ever more deeply with the fire of his purifying love and holiness. They experience an ever-deeper meaning in the words of Jesus, “Remain in me and I will remain in you” (Jn 15:4).

Trust experiences acertainty that a divine power within us is at its strongest precisely when we accept our own weakness and our utter dependence on his strength. We are humbly emboldened by “the power that enables him to bring everything under his control” (Phil 3:21).

Our limitless trust in God seems to satisfy him as nothing else can. That’s because it corresponds to his eternal faithfulness and reliability; it honors his truthfulness; implicitly it acknowledges his divine perfections. Not to rest in God is to derail the very plan of our creaturehood. In the classic words of the Confessions of St. Augustine, “Our hearts are made for thee, O Lord, and they cannot find rest until they rest in thee!” (book I, chap. 1).

This excerpt is from the book Pathways of Trust, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.