listening

listening

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Strength of Weakness

She and I sit crying and asking the hard questions.  This daughter become friend.  This young woman once womb-held who understands suffering.  Understands me.  We wonder what being saved really means when we walk the Prince of Darkness' sacred burial ground.  When the only light we see is the grey dimness of the shadow lands.  Destruction all around us.  The stench of death in our nostrils and tears the only stream.

Our hearts sorrow and spill for this brother.  Our warrior-poet in the fire.  His heart crying out to God, "Why have you turned your face from me, Lord?"  And all the reaching and all the prayers of his women-folk are  nothing more than printed verses on pretty paper hanging banners over his bed of suffering.  Small.

We cry out all our weakness together.  The weaker vessels.  Getting crushed sometimes, and wondering where our strength lies.  Where is the power of God in women who are longing to be of help to their wounded warriors?  Where, when the battle weary brush off our condolences because we know nothing of what it is to be...to become...men of God?  How can the folds of a skirt cleanse the blood on a sword?  How can we help, really?

We pour our questions out to God.  Offering Him all our weakness.  All our womanliness.

And after all the tears have been shed, and she tosses a whole mess of kleenex, she loads the worship music and looks up verses in her Bible.  We do what only we can, and we find our true strength for our men.  We turn our faces to Jesus.

And worship the Son.

Bernadette

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