The Glory of the Impossible
When I read this verse from an earthly perspective, I’m annoyed. It sounds like empty inspiration. Don’t we have every right to freak over impossible situations?
The other night, my husband tried to get me to watch My Cousin Vinny. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a comedy-of-errors about an inept lawyer trying to defend his innocent cousin. My husband found it hilarious. Meanwhile, every muscle in my body clenched involuntarily at the unfolding horrors of the court system, flashbacks and fears flooding over me until we had to turn it off.
I’ve been through court before, and experienced God’s explosive power providing for and protecting my daughter in the midst of serious difficulty and ongoing situations.
Yet I still have court ptsd (apparently), and fear of the legal system letting my daughter down. I certainly don’t feel infused with God’s explosive power in the face of difficulties.
It’s about perspective: When I look at the situation, I’m awake all night. When I look at God, reminding myself of who He is and what He’s done for us already, things shift— on the inside of me at least, which makes it a little more ok that things on the outside don’t appear to be budging yet.
In fact, there’s a growing part of me that almost gets excited as impossibilities surmount, because God’s provided in crazy ways before, and He’s not going to stop now!
One of my biggest prayers lately has become, “God, show me your reality that transcends what I see around me.”
It’s only from this perspective that we can receive the strength of Christ’s explosive power to conquer every difficulty. You may have recognized the reference, Phil. 4:13, and the more common translation, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I love the Passion Translation here, because it’s really not that I get stronger. It’s Christ’s strength all along. When we start to glimpse God’s reality that’s bigger than our human perspective, we start to see the situation for what it really is, and we realize we’ve had access to Christ’s explosive power all along. We look down in our hands and find a sword, and Christ Himself teaching us to wield it.
