When We Are Weak
Moses said to the Lord, ‘See, you have said to me, “Bring up this people”; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me… Now if I have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you…’
JHWH said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’
— Exodus 33.12-14
THIS LAST WEEK, we had the latest Gower Ministry Area Council meeting at Oxwich. Much excellent discussion was had. Personally, I am not good at meetings and, though I always attend them with a desire to stay calm and open to all, there were once again some flashpoints for me in which, invariably, my passion rises and I fail to retain strict meeting etiquette. Fortunately, people, who have experienced such situations, are usually patient with me and they were so this week. Oh, I should say I am certainly not the only one in whom the fire is not easily tamed! After all, we attend such meetings (though most of us probably wouldn’t if we could think of another way to do it) because we love God, love the Church in Wales, love church universal, love Gower.
But after the passion is spent, and the words have fallen to the sand or dispersed into the mystic Gower ether, I am very often left simply conscious of my smallness, my lack of significance, my inability to affect the ministry my head seems to think my heart yearns to effect.
In many walks of life, such confession might precede some kind of letter of resignation. My guess is that Moses, in the quotations above, was contemplating something like it. But church is not “many walks of life”. Church is a response to God’s calling to humanity and to all creation. Church is not even simply a humanly conceived response, but the Christ-bride breath of the Holy Spirit herself.
It is when we feel small and helpless, that God most powerfully reveals God’s Presence to us, covering our eyes with God’s hand so we are not burned up in the brightness, until the radiance has passed and we can see that God just passed by before us. God bless all you do in His Name.
When we are weak by RS Thomas
When we are weak, we are strong. When our eyes close on the world, then somewhere within us the bush burns.
When we are poor and aware
of the inadequacy of our table,
it is to that,
uninvited,
the guest comes.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 