My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9
Why do bad things happen to good people? Does that mean they’ve done something wrong that probably even they are not aware of?
Although that could be a possibility, bad things need not necessarily happen just because someone has done something wrong.
If we look at the story of Job, the Bible clearly says in Chapter 1 that Job was “blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”
Yet if we look at the different things that happened to him, we come back to the same question: Do bad things really happen to good people? Even Job’s friends questioned him, saying that there must be something he did wrong to deserve the hardships he faced. But only God knew Job’s heart and that he was truly blameless.
Flipping over to the new testament, we read about Paul’s transformation into an apostle of Christ who contributes to much of the teachings in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, Paul talks about his ‘thorn’. In verse 7, he explains this: “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”
Looking up the meaning of the word “conceited”, it translates to “being vain or excessively proud of oneself”. So basically, Paul, in this passage, states that he was given a thorn in his flesh (some people interpret this as an illness, some interpret it as afflictions relating to his persecutions, but either way, it refers to some sort of weakness, setback or something that’s ‘just not right’ or ‘just not working out’ or something bad that’s always happening) to keep him humble even though he had the Lord’s favour and received great spiritual revelations from God.
He also says he pleaded with the Lord three times to take the thorn away from him, but the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
This part kind of opened my eyes, and made me realize how human we humans really are. Despite how close we are with God, despite how spiritual, no matter how many times we pray, read the Bible, or go to church… We always search for God more when we’re in trouble than when things are going great. It’s true (There may be exceptional people out there, but I’m talking about most of us, including me). When things go fine, we tend to give God the backseat, and we start relying and depending on our own selves to get on with life. And we stop depending on God and submitting to his will. Basically, here’s the math: When everything’s 100% in our life, we give God <100% of ourselves. But when there are things that are <100% in life, we give God our 100% and put our trust and hope in him, because we come to the realization that we are nothing when we stand on our own and that God alone is our hope and our salvation. This is why, I think, God says to Paul, “my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Paul beautifully ends this passage by saying, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” The way I see it, I read this as “For when I see and acknowledge my weakness (I am weak in myself), then I depend on God and put my hope in Him to carry me along and get me through (I am strong in Him).”
I hope that no matter what we go through in life, be it good or bad, we are constantly wary of the fact that we are nothing on our own and that our very breath exists as God has allowed it to. When we give God our 100%, that’s all that matters, and even though we get put down by the “thorns” in our life, we will always find the peace, hope and strength to carry on.
