God Revealed in Weakness and Limitation

THE MORE WE ARE CALLED to greatness, the more we feel the weakness and limitation of our own flesh. Abraham was faithful: in obedience, he left his land without knowing where he was going (Heb 11: 8). Even though greatly encouraged by God's promises, he felt the pain of his own limited humanity, which seemed to contradict all that he was promised. After all, he was childless, and his only heir was a servant (Gen 15: 2-3). When our flesh truly feels its weakness and limits, the natural reaction is to rebel and make our prayer a form of complaint or lament. This experience, occurring almost daily, prepares us gradually for the critical moment when we realize with inescapable certainty that we have reached our utmost limit. "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1: 21). At such a moment, the solid basis of our hope takes the form of resignation as we stand face to face with the limits of our finitude.

This sense of limitation also leads us by the path of the dark night to which I referred before. Even if Job is to some extent resigned, his prayer, rising as it does from the limits and weakness of all flesh, gives expression to profound bitterness and anguish (Job 10: 1; 7: 7-21; 9: 28-31; 10: 1-22; 13: 20-21; 14: 18-22; 30: 20-23). We feel aggrieved because, in addition to suffering the ridicule that others heap on us for "taking leave" of ourselves, we now see that the godless seem to be doing quite well for themselves. How can it be that they prosper as they do even as they scoff at God? Such questions make our limitations feel all the more painful; they make our weakness seem a sickness; they make us feel like foolish idiots in the face of life.