I was amazed the other day by the humility of one of our drivers here in Uganda. As we were coming back from two days of evangelizing and preaching, the bearing’s failed on our van. We quickly drove to a repair shop that happened to be just a few miles away, and I watched as the mechanic pulled apart the wheel. Noticing some mistakes in his repair job, I mentioned them to the driver, hoping we’d make it back on what I thought was an incomplete job. And sure enough down just a few miles down the road, the familiar grind of bad bearings reappeared. I fought with our contact, making sure he understood that the mechanic never actually replaced the inner bearings because he was to lazy to pull the caliper off. And sure enough, that had been the problem. But what amazed me was the humility of the driver. He came back two days later, and confidently and honestly told me that I’d been right, and the van had been repaired correctly. I’d have such a hard time doing that! In my shame of being wrong, it would have been so hard for me to admit that someone else had been right.
This past spring, I had the privilege of hanging out with my Dad in Seattle. He and I both met up and had a blast continuing to build our friendship, hiking through the snow in the mountains, and visiting Boeing for a day. And leaving Boeing after watching 747, 777s, and 787s rolling off of the line, I was absolutely enthralled seeing so many people just like me working together to create such a beautiful machine. Engineers were making mistakes, refining manufacturing processes, trying new things, all to create a beautiful work of art in the end. Just the other day here in Uganda, Angi reminded me that in order for such an amazing thing to be built, people must be willing to lay their ideas down in the end. That even though one person’s idea may not be clearly visible in the final product, that even though someone else may have gotten the glory for a particular structure or design, that person would have been powerless and idealess to be recognized had it not been for the other thousands of other engineers, assemblers, accountants, and businessman helping him out. And I think that’s so true! We often feel that we’ve got to be the ones that have it all to be worth anything. And yet that’s never the way God created us to be. We were designed to live and work in community – all with a different, unique, and essential glory.
Yet even more so, we weren’t meant to work apart from God. I used to think that God was a crutch, that to rely upon Him meant that something was wrong with me. Yet the very tragedy of all humanity is that we all run away from God, thinking we can “do it” on our own and experience true life independent of our creator. That’s exactly what happened in Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose first to mistrust God in the very beginning. And throughout history we’ve continued to repeat that mistake over and over again. Yet Jesus says in John 15:4, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
I don’t have it all in me! We don’t have “it” within ourselves! Through all of my digging into my past, He’s trying to teach me humility and to rely upon Him. I’m reminded as God says in Acts 17:25-28, “And He is not served by human hands , as if he needed anything, because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…For in him we live and move and have our being.” Perhaps the confidence and authority and leadership that come with becoming a man of God, I truly will have someday. And even the abilities I desire, God will give me many times. But only so that I seek Him, and bring life and love to others. Because I think His greatest desire for us is to trust, love, and rely on Him.
Interestingly, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:7:
“To keep me from being conceited because of these surpassing great revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong.”
In the Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes (pp. 143-144):
“Honesty brings an end to pretense through a candid acknowledgement of our fragile humanity. It is always unpleasant, and usually painful, and that is why I am not very good at it.” He continues, “To the extent that I reject my ragamuffin identity, I turn away from God, the community, and myself. I become a man obsessed by illusion, a man of false power and fearful weakness, unable to think, act, or love.” Gerald May, A Christian psychiatrist in Washington DC, writes: “Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life.”
I am still haunted by parts of my past – I think because somehow therein remains evidence that I’m still a failure. I no longer want to fear looking into my real history, though; I’m choosing to believe that all I’ve gone through God has been right there through all of it. And everything He has created me to be is good – that I’m truly created in His image and that my life is not a mistake. Perhaps he has allowed me to fail so I can succeed at what He’s given me a true desire for – not what I’m trying to prove myself to be.
