Life Is Not For The Faint Of Heart (But God Is)
I feel the sunlight streaming through the windows onto my skin, yet somehow the world still seems dark and cold. The headlines this week have fallen on me like long shadows, cast by the unrelenting clouds of hatred, violence, death, and evil, and in this chilly climate my heart responds with dismay. We like to think we’ve progressed beyond our ancestors, but when I see ordinary people dancing and celebrating the death of someone they merely disagreed with, I despair. How can we ever move forward like this? When the answer to open debate is a bullet, we’re all finished. Meanwhile, wars, atrocities, and injustices continue unchecked around the world, many of which we barely hear about. Even if we did, we wouldn’t have the capacity to track them all. There are too many.
As a small, limited human being living a small, limited life, these realities are overwhelming—and that doesn’t even begin to account for the many difficult, heavy situations among my friends, family, and community, and the one’s I’m facing myself. Life, as they say, is not for the faint of heart. Then again, what human heart is actually strong enough to carry all the burdens this world piles on us, without fainting? We don’t have the capacity. There are too many.
Asaph wrote in Psalm 73:26, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” He knew the truth. His heart could fail. His strength could run out. And yet, he remained hopeful. How is this possible? If he only measured the weight of unrelenting trouble against his own limited strength, he would have despaired. He didn’t, because he knew that while life may not be for the faint of heart, God is. God specialises in strengthening faint hearts. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak” (Isaiah 40:29). As he said to the Apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul’s response? “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). If the answer to the problems of our world was only ourselves, we’d all be finished. It is not. Paul knew the answer: “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10). In the Lord, he found mighty power to fight his own sin, grace to stand firm in terrible troubles, and strength to get up and push back relentlessly against the darkness. My flesh and my heart may fail, it’s true. But my God has more than enough strength for every faint heart that trusts itself to him.
