A Great Insufficiency.

Fall leaves are beautiful, but they are dying. It's kind of a morbid thought, but they literally turn different colors because the cells that produce and process the chlorophyll that keeps them green are dead and no longer able to keep leaves looking like leaves. You don't look at lots of green leaves and marvel at their beauty. People don't travel half way around the world to see leaves in the height of summer, but in Fall on the other hand, well that's a different story. There's a bed and breakfast in Floyd that is completely filled in October with people from England and Australia and other countries that have literally traveled half way around the world to watch leaves die. I totally get it because I'm such a fall lover, but when you really think about it the whole thing is kind of wonky.

I've been overwhelmed with the notion of insufficiency. But it's more than just simply insufficiency. I think that a lot of the time we are able to see our own insufficiency and it overwhelms us, blinds us to all else and we are consumed in the sheer fact of facing our own short coming. That's part, but not the whole of what I've been overwhelmed by lately. I've been overwhelmed by the fact that there is an incredible amount of BEAUTY in insufficiency. Just like watching leave die, watching someone embrace and live in their insufficiency is beautiful. When we are broken, and cracked, and have nothing to give it leaves more room for the Lord to take over. When we have carefully stitched ourselves together and tied on our mask of perfection there's no room for Jesus. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "For my power is made perfect in weakness." His power is made PERFECT in weakness. Not just good, not just okay, but PERFECT. Wow.

He fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 3 fish, and there were left overs. The insufficiency of those people and the disciples insufficiency to feed those people was surrendered to Jesus, and he took it an ran with it. He didn't just make it enough, he made it exceed what was needed.

In Exodus God starts weaving Moses story through 2 midwives that outwit Pharaoh, and not just any midwives - Hebrew midwives. Slave women. Pharaoh tells them to kill all the baby boys when they were born, and basically they tell him "Yo, the Hebrew women are beasts are the babies are already born when we get there." They lied. Exodus 1:17 says, "But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, and let the male children live." They knew that they couldn't change the world on their own, they knew that Pharaoh was crazy powerful, but they handed over their lowly job to the Lord, and to put it in the words of my pastor - "He used this insufficient army." He used these two midwives, Shiprah and Puah, to save the male children of the Hebrews in Egypt, to save Moses, and to deliver his people. His power was made perfect in their weakness.

Moses had a speech impediment. In Exodus 4 he flat out tells the Lord don't send me because I can't talk well. He's not comfortable with his weakness, he tried to use it as an excuse to get out of doing something that he found scary. The Lord saw his weakness and saw more room to work.

Real life: last Friday I gave a club talk hours after I was sent home for throwing up at the elementary school. I wish I could club talks like that every week. It's one thing to cognitively be aware of the fact that I'm weak and insufficient, it's another thing entirely to actually be physically weak. To know that there is no other way I will be able to stand in front of that room of kids and keep it together for 15 minutes with out the power and perfection of Christ. To be driven to a point of complete separation from self, and complete reliance on the Lord is a beautiful place to be.

I'm overwhelmed by how much more the Lord can do through me when I am weak, when I am insufficient. Yet I am so quick to hold on to my faults, to cover them with a mask, and make them look like perfection. I am so quick to hide my insufficiency, when in reality that is where the Lord flourishes. I have a great insufficiency, I am so cracked its crazy, but yet the Lord fills those holes with perfection. He works perfectly when I am incapable.

My God is so good. My great insufficiency is beautiful because he is present in it.

AND because no post occurring in October is complete without some pretty pictures of slowly dying yet beautiful fall leaves, here's a peek at the beauties at my 2nd home in Floyd (also a great reminder of the beauty of weakness/insufficiency):