“Keep our frailty before us, LORD: that we might set our hearts on You.” - Common Prayer
After I dropped a child off at church for the youth group weekend ski trip (the fragile youth hurtling off to the mountains in a bus, to go hurtle down the slopes on skis!) — there was the fair linen that was damaged by arson earlier this week, sitting in a cardboard box, outside the completely intact building.
“Our frailty” has been much before my eyes/on my mind lately. Maybe my age, maybe circumstances/current events, maybe “just” the Spirit working to convict me of my “One”-ness (Enneagram) and perfectionism. (Digression: I even found Journal Club distressing last night because I wanted satisfying, cut-and-dried, neatly packaged answers.)
I do think You are putting frailty before my eyes, showing me messes and pain and limits, to help me look to You. The paradox is that because it’s tempting to expect perfection/satisfaction outside You, we so easily focus on those expectations and avoid frailty like the plague! And because You are the only true Perfection/Satisfaction — those (otherwise unmeetable) expectations inevitably lead to frustration, emptiness, resentment, despair. Yet when we let go of those expectations, we can truly see and accept our frailty (fallenness! depravity!!). And it is only THEN that we are free to receive Your gift of Jesus, who accepted our frailty in order to enable us to die and rise with Him — to give us the gift of the Spirit so we can live His risen life and bring life to others.
Life or death — it’s all in where our hearts are fixed and to Whom we are looking!
Preserve me, O LORD, for in You I take refuge;