God of the Foolish

God chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, and the unimportant to shame the self-important (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). To shame them, of course, into recognizing their proper place in the world and hopefully, recognize His. 

This is a popular verse, one that's fairly well-known. And most of the time, to understand it, I need to look no further than the mirror. 

In the mirror, I find both of these things staring back at me - the foolish and the wise, the weak and the strong, the unimportant and the self-important. 

If you were to look at my life from the outside, you would say it is, at best, improbable. I'm not the person you would think would be an example of anything. And yet, the testimony of my life is all of the things - God's goodness, God's mercy, God's forgiveness, God's grace. God has truly done a marvelous work in me and as easy as it would be for the world to write me off because they think I'm foolish, they think I'm naive, they think I'm weak, they think I'm unimportant, I just keep showing up and making the kind of difference, the kind of impact, that undeniable says that something special is happening here. 

To be clear, that something special is God's goodness, not mine. 

At the same time, at the very moment that I start to understand that God really is doing a good work in and through me in the most unlikely of ways, the moment that I start to settle into a little bit of the bigness that God has expanded my life into, someone else comes along and puts me in my place. Someone that I would find easy to write off as being younger, less experienced, more naive, uneducated, or whatever. 

I have 40+ years of experience, to date, of being me and of being truly loved by God and living this miraculous sort of life and being the weak one who shames the strong...and yet, God constantly reminds me that I'm not as wise as I think I am, nor am I as strong or truly important. And He uses folks who have absolutely 0 minutes of experience being me. 

So there's that. 

I remember one time I went over to a neighbor's house where she was struggling to move a piece of furniture, and I offered to help. She looked right at me and said, "You're too small. You can't help." So I picked up that piece of furniture in one motion and carried it where it needed to go. I shot her a small smile in playfulness and said, "I'm small, but mighty." And I've said that a lot over the years - in physical contexts and non-physical ones. 

And yet, here I am also listening to others tell me the very same thing. I look at them and think they cannot possibly be as mighty as I am, have as much life experience, have developed as much resilience and strength, and I'm always wanting to protect them from trying to do things too big for them. And I look over and see the same kind of smile that I'm prone to flash, and I can see it in their eyes - they're small, but mighty, too. 

And all over again, I am put to shame. Mostly because I remember what it's like to be written off and here I am doing the very same thing. 

But then, I smile, too, because God is so very good to all of us, really. He uses our small, broken, weak places to remind the world how big, strong, and loving He truly is. And, well, I need reminded of that just as often as I need to remind others of it.