Your Strength or His?

Journal 2005 09 29

The men were complaining. Up the Mighty Missouri River, through the Gates of the Rockies, around the Great Falls of the Missouri, through the rattlesnake infested cliffs in Montana and over the Rockies in much travail and no complaining. Why now? They are sick! Most are almost immobilized from something in the change of diet. And yet, they do their best to advance. Today, they move downriver near today’s Orofino, Idaho and set up “Canoe Camp.” These tough guys have been out of the mountains for one week now and still they are debilitated by the inability to digest their food easily.

It is once again Divine Providence that has allowed them to make this sickly transition under the care of old chiefs and women. I can’t help but ponder their fate had they been required to be ever vigilant from the probing, testing nature that is found in young men of every stripe.

I’m able to compress the last few days into this single report because of their similarities. It has been “worm, verry worm, hot and fine” all week. The old chiefs remaining in camp are wonderfully curious and hospitable. William Clark must have had an iron will. In spite of being sick himself he sends out the hunters who are at all able to rouse themselves to find game. A handful of deer are harvested, but not nearly enough for all to eat venison. Clark and the chiefs proceed downstream to look for trees suitable for canoe building.

Now that they have relocated camp, Clark appoints those who think they can begin to work. Large pine trees are in abundance and waiting for axes to fall and shape them into river worthy craft. Even now the Pacific Ocean is beckoning our travelers. Clark issues axes to the six men who think they feel well enough to begin to work. Have I said it enough before? These guys are tough!

I’ve spent some time in Orofino, Idaho. It is a beautiful place built around the lively Clearwater River that formed the valley it occupies. A great spot on earth now filled with the kind of people you’d welcome as your next-door neighbors. And it was that way two hundred years ago.

The simple thought from this lesson asks how tough are we? Do we work when we don’t feel well? Do we whine and complain at our ailments to the exclusion of our responsibilities? Do we fail to make progress on our bigger mission when we are sick?

I was sick and in bed for over a month earlier this year. I did not advance on anything except racking up medical bills. Did I, could I, swing an axe, fall a tree and carve a canoe? If my life depended on it maybe. Maybe not. I did not do any of those things as my wonderful bride so tenderly cared for me. I did hear that still small voice of God speak to my heart about what He was going to do while I was unable to do anything. “I am at work and you can’t be.” A lot like the theme we spoke of earlier, “In weakness we are made strong.”  

Weakness in the middle of mission. How can we possibly win? “What more may I say? For the time will fail me telling about Gideon, Barak, and also Samson and Jephthah, and also David and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith overcame kingdoms, worked out righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the mouths of the sword, acquired power from weakness, became strong in war; made armies of foreigners to yield.
(Hebrews 11:32-34)

If you believe that God created the world and works all things for His purposes, then it is reasonable to conclude that in this week of weakness that God has hidden this small cadre of soldiers under His protective wing while they “acquire power from weakness.”

Are we willing to be weak that He may be strong? Are you tired in need of strength to complete the course He has set before you? Then the question is even more simple, “His strength or yours?”