A thorn in my side...

 From Helen

I was chatting to some school children recently and they asked me questions about my work and the Church. Then they asked me some more personal questions. One of these was, ‘did you always want to be a Reverend ?’ my answer was no. I explained that at 4 I wanted to be the pope and by 6 a ballerina. All the children laughed at the idea of me being a ballerina !! Then  I got asked if I ever had a sporting dream when I was a child. I categorically said, ‘No’. Me and sport have never been friends, sports has never been a gift of mine, although I did get very into swimming at one stage.

It got me to thinking about strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses are:- sports, chocolate, sports, temper, sports, sleepiness, sport, over chatting, sports – you get the picture. My strengths are :- well, they are clear to see and maybe modesty isn’t a strength of mine !

In our epistle reading this morning we heard some very honest statements by Paul. As Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church he was writing to a Church that had once been on fire for God, they had been a wonderful congregation but people had risen up amongst them doubting Paul and this had led to splits in the congregation. People had started to lose their faith, they had become distracted from God. 

Paul was honest enough to talk of his own weaknesses but not to make people feel sorry for him, not to get people to fall on his side but to show that it was God who made him strong.

Paul wrote of a thorn in the flesh, this is one of those great mysteries. There has been a lot of speculation… what was the thorn? Was it an illness? Was it a person who kept disagreeing with him who kept making life difficult? Was it an issue to do with his faith? was it kidney stones ? The suggestions are endless.

It is a great mystery to which there is no answer except Paul knew that he needed more and more of God anything else was a distraction. Paul knew in his weaknesses God made him strong and in the same way he was not going to be distracted from following Jesus.

We are the people we are because that is how God has made us. We can’t all be great at everything but we can all turn to God knowing that He can use us for who we are. We all have weaknesses but it is in these that we are made strong – how ?because in our weakness we turn to God and He makes us strong.

I really like cooking, I don’t do it often enough so people would hardly believe that I do but I find cooking really relaxing as long as I have the time. I particularly like cooking roast dinners and chilli con carne – not together though!  I once saw a television programme where a character whose gift was definitely not cooking decided to make a trifle. All was going well until she served it, with jelly, custard, minced lamb, mashed potato and then cream. She had got two pages of a cook book stuck together and so had made half a trifle and half a shepherds pie and put them together.  Disaster !

In order for cooking to work well there is a recipe, which has everything balanced within it.  I often think of us as being a bit like a perfect recipe put together by God.  We have the right balances of all that we need.  I will not ask you to decide whether you think you are a Chilli con carne or a roast dinner, but think for a moment about yourself and all that makes you the way you are.  All that makes you the person you are has been put together by God, but what about those parts of you that you do not like so much your weaknesses ?

God knows why we have our strengths and weaknesses we are finely balanced. Paul had the thorn in his side. This thorn was stopping him he felt and he kept asking God to help him. God responded by telling Paul that his weakness would make him strong because it would make him rely more on God.

Paul got cross with God and to honest I know that feeling. I suffer from M.E. and when I was Ordained I was excited and desperate to do more and more. This was great except I became exhausted and physically struggled. I was cross with God after all I was doing work for Him why was He stopping me ? I didn’t have an amazing healing, I didn’t suddenly develop an extra 24 hours a day but I did come to realise that God has made me the way He has for a reason. 

Paul had worked something out, that whilst he had a thorn in his flesh, something that he did not like, something which stopped him from doing all that he wanted, it turned out to be a blessing. In the reading we heard earlier, Paul pointed out that even though he would have liked to have got rid of this thorn in his flesh it had reminded him that in his weakness all he could do was to turn to God for strength.   Paul noted that it was in his weakness that he was made strong.

Going back to my earlier story about the girl who mixed up two recipes and created a disaster, there was a positive, in her weakness she realised that she could make two halves of a meal, so now all she needed was to learn the other halves.

In the same way whenever we may think we are not completely perfect, whenever we may think there is a weakness that stops us from doing all that we would like, or something that prevents us from being happy, then we can know that in God’s world that is not so bad.  In our weakness, in our admittance of our weaknesses we are asking God to help us be strong.  We are the way we are for a reason, that reason is that we are part of God’s perfect recipe for us.  The recipe that is individual to each of us.  So when things seem a bit topsy turvy, then we can know that God takes our weaknesses when we ask Him to, and makes us strong, stronger than we ever thought possible.  

May we always be prepared to admit our need for more of God in our lives and for God to take our weaknesses and make us strong. AMEN