I have a lounge chair. It was given to me by a friend who was buying new furniture. It is big and comfy. I spent weeks in it when I had the virus. In the afternoon I can put my feet up and lean back and nap as the sunshine pours in through our living room window. When I come into the living room, that old lounge chair invites me to come over and enjoy its comfort. I know I could spend days (and maybe nights) in that lounge chair reading or playing on my computer.
I love that old lounge chair! It is not only comfortable, but unfortunately, it also entices me to give up and not fight anymore.
Inside I do not feel old at 75 years, but the last few years have taken a toll on my body that I still have to fight. I have pain most days and my muscles have lost most of their strength. It takes effort to do even the most common things, such as emptying the dishwasher or running a vacuum or simply taking a walk.
I have a choice to make each day—to fight to move or to accept the invitation of that old lounge chair and spend the rest of my days napping in the sunshine.
I have chosen to fight to move as long as I can. I think every day about what God told Paul when he asked God to remove a thorn in the flesh that he had been enduring. He asked three times to have it removed, but God chose a different path for Paul. God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”
Paul responded, “Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” [2 Corinthians 12:9-10 HCSB]
I do not think I have yet reached that point where I can say like Paul “I take pleasure in weaknesses,” but I can agree with him that because of Christ, “when I am weak, then I am strong.”
