I’ve always loved that Jesus came as a weak baby. There’s something so biblical about weakness that hides a secret, counterintuitive strength. It’s like the upside world you inhabit in Philippians 2 where we learn how the servant becomes the exalted one. You know the mystery: the first become last; the last become first. You see this remarkably laid out in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 where God speaks to Paul about Paul’s weakness that becomes his strength:
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
It’s a strange phenomenon that the weak person enjoys God’s power resting on her. The weak Christian takes particular delight in the things everyone avoids and detests: insults, hardship, persecution, difficulties (one translation says “calamities”). Delighting in calamity? In hardship?
The older I grow in the Lord, the more strange I realize Christianity actually is. It’s a profoundly different kind of living.
If it’s a Christmas of weakness—through illness and difficulty in any form–may we know the mystery of Christ’s power resting on us in a special way. May we feel fresh strength and supernatural delight.