Good morning…
As I pulled from our mailbox a white 3 x 5 envelop, I was excited to receive a handwritten note. She expressed gratitude for our God-ordained friendship. We are quietly walking together through the deep valley of her grief. On the top half of the card, she had cut out and glued on a touching Henri Nouwen quote.
“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us,” Nouwen writes, “we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Powerlessness. We hate it. But it is a reality better walked together than alone.
Don’t you know? Haven’t you been listening?
Yahweh is the one and only everlasting God,
the Creator of all you can see and imagine!
He never gets weary or worn out.
His intelligence is unlimited;
he is never puzzled over what to do!
He empowers the feeble
and infuses the powerless with increasing strength (Isaiah 40:28-29, TPT).
I love walking beside others who notice our feeble powerlessness. Together we are infused with God’s increasing strength.
…Sue…
P.S. For those enjoying the Gift from the Sea study God is writing through me, here are three questions to ponder and discuss with your support people.
- Designed for dependency, our own powerlessness forces us to focus on the power of God. How have you seen these dynamics at play this week?
- Reviewing your personal responses emailed to you, what repeating words and themes do you see running through these five study segments?
- What new revelations has God inspired in you through the stories, the Scriptures, and the songs of this week?
