For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
- 1 Corinthians 1:25-27
Once again I was struck by God's grace as I opened up my Sojourners verse and voice email devotion this morning. I have what you might call a bipolar ego... it swings from the pits of feeling totally worthless and useless and moments of the height of pride and arrogance. The verse for the day was 1 Corinthians 1:25-27 and it spoke healing words into my life.
New Zealand humour has a tendency to be self deprecating and one of my stock standard jokes on myself is that 'One of the sure signs that the Presbyterian Church is in trouble, is that they accepted me for the ministry... that's desperation'. Its not really putting myself down it's rather the lamenting that we don't have the (sorry to my colleagues here) top flight pick of the bunch people lining up to take on ministry and leadership, like we tell ourselves we used to in our idealised past.
However it is good to be reminded as I was today with 1 Corinthians 1:25-27 of the reality that it is God's calling and God's choosing (hmm you'd think with my reformed background that it would be hard not to focus on such things). While it is all about our calling to be God's people it spoke to me about calling to ministry... It is all about God's wisdom and God's strength, not mine. That's not a cop out that does not mean we don't work hard at upskilling and growing, but in the end there is a reliance on God's wisdom and God's strength...
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