Practical Strength – Horses, Job and Psalms

There is this bristling subject of resilience that has me captivated. I’ve heard my share of sad and hopeless tales and stories of despair of late and I’m led to believe that life is inevitably designed to conquer us. Furthermore, I find personally that when I’m most determined to be strong and show strength I’m paradoxically most open to weakness--almost as if I’m duped into going it alone in my own strength. Practical strength can be an elusive commodity.

How is it that there are times in life when our strength evaporates and for the life of us we cannot be anything other than pitiable? There certainly is no simple answer.

The image of the horse is one of strength; physical strength, yes, but also strength of will that must be broken if the horse is to be useful for human use. Job and Psalms also use the image of strength variously, often in nuances with regard to lack of it. No fewer than sixty-one times does the New International Version cite derivatives of this word, in these two books alone. This is a vexing subject because there are fewer biblical works sadder than Job and Psalms (a third of which are laments), with the possible exception of Jeremiah and Lamentations.

The key ingredient or symptom in the loss of strength is complaint. Yahweh says to Jeremiah after one of his vocal complaints, “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5 NIV)

And life is the test. We muster our strength in our minds and hearts (i.e. safe country) but where it counts is in the thick of life (i.e. the thickets by the Jordan). I recall Eugene Peterson saying in an interview with Sheridan Voysey that his practice of spending two hours with God prior to the business of his day beginning was not really about prayer; the praying really began when his quiet time with God finished, and as he entered the world for the day ahead, interacting with people and managing his tasks and competing priorities.

And so it is with us. We want to be strong, capable, humble, respectful, in control. But real practical strength comes only via the slow process of training in ‘letting go and letting God.’ The serendipitous nature of yielding in no strength of our own--of often simply getting out of the way of what God is doing--is the strength of God to have faith though we do not see at the time.

All we can do is be aware enough to pray continually, and have the faith to believe what we hear back, and the resolve to do obediently what needs to be done, rejecting our pride. Strength is no small matter, but paradoxically, like happiness, it can most elude us when we’re trying too hard.

Let’s relax and have faith and not panic and suddenly we have the foresight to reap strength abundantly. Complaint is another sign of an admission that strength issues perplex us. Giving in to complaint is often a trap when in reflection we could’ve done quite well enough without it. Complaining, that is. It doesn’t solve many (if any) of our problems. It is more likely to just complicate things for us.

Practical strength is simple yet complex. The saying, ‘Just do it,’ fits. We need to go onto the higher revelation rather than just holt an activity because it seems to hard; perhaps our self-imposed limits are a lot lower than what we could achieve? Either way, practical strength is not rocket science. Faith, training and obedience are all crucial.

Copyright © 2008, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.