When My Strength is Spent

Psalm 71, Part I

"Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb" (Psalm 71:6).

Born almost six weeks early and weighing less than 4 pounds, I was not created as a physically strong person. While I don't think of strength as being among my chief concerns (beauty, knowledge, and acceptance) come immediately to mind in that regard), I suspect that I have spent more time that I realize in trying to prove that I am not weak or needy. Even as a five-foot-tall southern belle, I was loath to let men or anybody else do things for me because I couldn't do them. Open my door? "Certainly! Because we're all clear that I can do that myself but am simply allowing you to do it instead." Carry a ridiculously large box across the office at work? "No, thank you. I'll just take care of that myself." While I've matured through the overt arm wrestling games, I find in this time of utter dependence that the old strongholds still stand.

As usual, the most significant and sobering applications of this tendency are spiritual in nature. I recently discussed with a friend the debt of love among believers as expressed in Romans 8:13 ("Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law"). I've always envisioned myself as the one who is zealously fulfilling the law in this. This exhortation to "owe no one anything" has been such a natural part of my philosophy that I almost mechanically consider how to “one-up” a gift or a gesture from a friend. That creeping legalism, always demanding proof to legitimize its righteousness, has played out in so many of my relationships. I think that I forced myself to prove that I was a better friend simply to alleviate the fear that I was a worse one.

I cannot remember a time in my life in which I been indebted to as many people as I am right now, and the debt forces me to reevaluate my true condition. If I don't see myself as a debtor, I will not be grateful for the provisions that are made. Until I embrace my need for mercy—both from God and from others—then I won't ask for it with humility. So long as I believe in my own autonomy, I will stubbornly enslave myself to that freedom until my impotence condemns me.

Now that my life is not functioning, my humility is—which drives me back to the mercy of God where it unites my heart with the psalmist. I will only cry out “forsake me not” when I believe that my strength is spent. And the strength-spent child is perfectly situated to receive the promises of the psalm.