I’m
recovering, slowly, from the worst flu ever.
I used to read about people dying of the flu, and think,
“Who dies of the flu?”
Never will I say that again. As I enter my third week
of near total incapacitation, I understand how this thing
kills people. Moreover, I understand why, even if it doesn’t
kill them, they might want to die.
For me, one of the worst parts of being so sick has been
the feeling of uselessness. For the first two weeks, I
could really do very little but sleep and watch TV. Working
was out of the question, as were cooking, reading, acts
of charity, and everything else that supposedly makes
us productive members of society. Even praying was difficult.
I just couldn’t focus.
Worst of all, I had to cancel speaking trips — including
a talk to five hundred students on the campus of a major
university. I kept trying to convince myself I could go.
But who wants to spend an evening watching a woman with
a 103-degree fever collapse on stage?
Nothing good was coming out of my existence. Books weren’t
being written. Talks weren’t being given. Lives weren’t
being changed. I wasn’t learning anything. (Well, that’s
not exactly true. I stayed with my parents — who have
cable — and learned how very many bad 1970’s sitcoms are
still in syndication.) I wasn’t moving any closer to any
goal I had set for myself.
But then I thought about Someone else who’d been in a
similar situation. He’d had a fairly productive little
ministry. He traveled around, He healed some very sick
people (including a few who were actually, clinically
dead), He taught people about God. He changed their lives.
He must’ve felt He was doing some good in His little corner
of the world.
But then He was arrested on trumped-up charges and sentenced
to death. I tend to believe that the human side of Christ,
as He carried His cross to Calvary, was thinking, as His
disciples were, that this seemed like a senseless waste.
He had been doing good, changing lives. And that ministry
was about to come to a senseless end, all because of the
petty jealousies of some supposedly holy men.
But He knew, in His divine nature, something His disciples
didn’t. He knew that God takes what looks like senseless
suffering and uses it for His higher purposes. He used
the unjust execution of His only Son to reconcile the
whole world to Himself. He chose that moment of seeming
defeat to claim His ultimate victory over sin.
It works the same way for us. So many times, we’re constrained
from doing what we see as “useful.” Sick people are confined
to bed. Mothers wish they could be out evangelizing, while
evangelists wish they could quit evangelizing and have
children. We teach CCD classes and wish they were held
in full stadiums instead of half-empty classrooms.
Don’t get me wrong. We need to do what we can. But we
also need to trust God and know that He has a plan.
It may not look like our plan. It may, quite honestly,
not look particularly efficient. It may look downright
senseless.
But He knows what He’s doing. And He can use our uselessness,
our incapacity, just as well as He uses our strengths.
So we need to offer it all up. We need to give him our
powerlessness, our weakness, our uselessness. We need
to join it to Christ’s “powerlessness” on the Cross.
And then, we’re no longer useless, because we’re tapped
into the greatest Power there is.
Mary
Beth Bonacci can be reached at Real Love, Inc., 6732
W. Coal Mind Ave., #228, Littleton, CO 80123. Visit
her website at www.reallove.net.
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