What if God's Way Really IS NOT by Might and Power?

I have always enjoyed good health and strength, but I fell and broke my right knee cap a year and a half ago and have been on a lengthy journey, struggling to regain the use of my leg. There have been complications and setbacks and most recently another fall has further hampered my ability to walk. Discouragement has been close at hand over and over again. It's been very hard to embrace the loss of strength in it all. This recent fall is causing me to ask the Lord more about how His kingdom works.

Theoretically, I have accepted that weakness is God's way of working as seen in Jesus' lifestyle and death; but internally I haven't accepted it. I don't know how to live this way because I am a product of a culture that highly values independence and self-sufficiency and practically despises weakness and neediness. I told someone who has been caring for me this week that one of the harder parts of this affliction is having to ask others for help for the smallest things.

This week I received an offer for a young teenage girl who was born with physical disabilities and doesn't walk well to bring me something that has helped her with pain. I was deeply touched by this and have been thinking that this is a picture of how God's kingdom works - the weak caring for the weak. We are all desperately weak in one way or the other. But rather than concentrate on how to use our weaknesses to give life to others, we focus on covering up our weaknesses and promoting our strengths to serve God.

Everything about the gospel and Jesus' teachings and example tell us that weakness and insufficiency is how the kingdom of God works. Most my life I've pictured God as having power reserves from which to draw in case He needs to use them. But what if God's weakness is His strength...period?! What if the cross and Jesus' way of non-retaliation to enemies is the only way of God?? What if God doesn't have power reserves for some future date by which He will make all things right?? What if He will accomplish it all through weakness and loss?? What if that is God's modus operandi now and in the age to come??

Last year I was struck by this article: When Frodo and Jesus Fail at Mount Doom. It touches eloquently on the weakness of God.

What if all the weaknesses we try to hide about ourselves are really what God uses to give life to others?? I wonder what it would look like for God's people to live in this way? I really don't know, but I pray for this for myself and all of us who are Jesus followers..