The Weak Things Were The Point

By half past four the apartment is echoing, which is the strangest thing an apartment ever does. All the furniture is on the truck. Somebody has stacked the flattened boxes by the door. There are seven people standing around in a room that has stopped being anybody's, holding the last of the tape and a plastic bag with three plates in it, and nobody quite wants to be the one who says it is done.

Then the woman whose place it was says, half to the room, "Should somebody pray before we lock it?" And every head turns, without a word being said, to the same person. Because everybody knows. She is the one who does that.

And she does the thing she has done her whole life. Before she prays, she prays a preface. "I'm not very good at this, I'll probably say it wrong, don't expect anything." A small laugh at the end of it so it lands soft. Then nine words, out loud, in a bare room, over a doorway and a family and a set of keys about to be handed over. Nine. And the room goes quiet in a way that nobody planned and nobody wants to break, and somebody's teenager, who has been on a screen for four hours, has taken his headphones off.

In the truck afterward, the thing she cannot stop hearing is not the nine words. It is the preface. Because she has been saying versions of that sentence since she was about eleven. It is only. It is just. It is nothing really. Sorry, it is not much. And you have your own edition of it, and you can hear yourself saying it, and if you are honest you have a full catalog of what is wrong with the thing you have to give: it is too small, it is the odd kind, it comes too late, it is not the sort of help people actually need.

The apology is doing a job, and it is not the job you think

Let me get at the hard part before anything lifts, because it has been carried politely for a long time and politeness is heavy.

That preface is not modesty. I know it wears modesty's coat and I know that is how everybody around you reads it, but you and I both know what it actually is. It is a first strike. If you name the smallness of the thing before anybody else can, then nobody gets to name it, and you cannot be caught out having thought too highly of what you were holding. It is armor, and you did not put it on for no reason. Somewhere back there, something you offered got weighed in front of you, and you decided never to be surprised like that again.

Here is what it costs, though, and this is the part I want you to look at. The person you are handing the thing to hears the disclaimer first. So before they can receive anything, they have to manage your embarrassment. You have handed them two items and only one of them was a gift.

You have something real to hand people, and it does not need a warning label attached to the front of it. Written, and written twice in one verse, and the Holy Spirit does not deliver a gift and an apology in the same package.

And now hear what Paul actually says, because the wording is stronger than anybody quotes it.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.1 Corinthians 1:27

Chosen. Twice, in one verse. Not permitted. Not made do with. Not worked around, not accommodated, not graciously tolerated because nothing better was available on the day. Selected. On purpose. By God, who had every option there is and went with this one.

You were chosen with the exact shape you have, and the shape was the reason and not the obstacle. 1 Corinthians 1:27 hangs the whole thing on what God chose rather than on what the chosen thing measured, and the Spirit who did that choosing has not since gone back and revised the list.

He did not work around it. He picked it up and used it.

Here is the second thing, and it is the one that changes how tomorrow feels.

There is a version of grace people preach that goes like this: God is very kind, so He finds a use for the small odd thing you have, even though a bigger one would obviously have been better. That is not the verse. The verse says the weak thing was chosen in order to confound the mighty thing. The smallness is not a handicap God generously overlooks. It is the mechanism. He picked an instrument that could not possibly account for the result, on purpose, so that when the result comes nobody in the room can attribute it to the instrument.

Which means that the nine words in the empty apartment were not a shortfall. Nine words is exactly the kind of thing He chooses.

You are holding something God selected, and He selected it because of the size of it and not in spite of the size. Scripture settled the selection long before you had an opinion about your own hands, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by anything He handed out.

Now let me say the necessary thing, because there is a way of reading this that would put a load on you and I will not do that. Nothing here is a job. I am not naming you a role and I am not sending you anywhere. And if what you have today is nothing at all, if you are at the end of your strength and the honest total is nine words and no energy for a tenth, then hear this exactly as it is written: that is the chosen instrument, at full strength, not a reduced one. God did not set a minimum.

Right now, as you read, you have a real part among God's people, and it is not decorative and it is not on probation. Read 1 Corinthians 1:27 again and count the conditions about strength. There are none, and the Spirit is the one who makes a small thing land at full weight in somebody's chest.