This passion week, I’m pondering over just how powerful paradoxes are.
Paradoxes seem illogical and go against the core of what our instincts tell us. And yet, we have the model of the Son of God who humbled himself so that we might have Life. Jesus who is hailed as King on Palm Sunday will be crucified before the week is over.
Wishing you, my dear readers, deep and powerful insight into the paradoxes in your life!
“Please take this trial away from me as fast as possible. Restore my body to good health. Touch me so my pain miraculously goes away. Heal me while I sleep so I wake up free.”
If this is what I am solely focused on, if this is the only option I’m fixated on, could I be missing out on other significant things in the process? Like the miracle of experiencing the reality of grace so I can be gracious in the midst of my suffering. Hope in the light of despair. Strength when overcome by weakness. Light in the darkness. Beauty where there are now ashes. Joy in the midst of impossibilities.
God is able to heal—that goes without saying. But these paradoxes are also miracles:
Beauty out of ashes,
Strength out of weakness,
The last shall be first,
The least shall be the greatest.
Small is big,
Weak is strong,
Become childlike to become the greatest in God’s kingdom,
Be meek and inherit the earth.
Die to live,
Give up to gain,
Turn the other cheek,
Walk in humility and be exalted.
Become a “slave to righteousness” and find true freedom,
Be consumed by fire to become refined and pure,
Endure pain and be worked into the finest pearl,
Be pruned to bear the best fruit.
Our Creator is clearly in the business of taking our darkest moments and bringing something good out of them, if we are willing to follow Him and learn from Him.
“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
—Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV)
© shini abraham, from Treasures in Darkness – duco divina I contemplative doodling
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