10.04 | Gutters & Grace
2 Corinthians 12
‘So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me’
2 Corinthians 12:7-9
I often write sitting at our kitchen table. Our kitchen has folding glass doors, overlooking the garden, and so, when thinking and praying, I’ll often look out of the windows while I chew on ideas and themes and try and find the emphases of the Spirit for the day. This morning, a fox was exploring the garden.
We live in a densely populated urban area, but close to one hundred acres of woodland. It makes it a popular place for foxes, and so this morning’s visitor wasn’t unusual. Foxes are as agile as a cat and as fast as a dog, and they’re remarkably adaptable. On the one hand they’re scavengers, hunting vermin and raiding any bin bags left out. And yet, on the other, they’re residents of beautiful woodland, who opportunistically take advantage of moments of comfort. One of our neighbours, having left the back door open on a summer’s day, once found a fox curled up and sleeping on her couch.
From napping on a couch to raiding bins, the urban fox lives a life of extremes.
Today we go deep into Paul’s own spiritual journey.
And yet, the depth of his life seems to go in two very different directions.
It goes deep into the heavenly. He describes this experience, flipping between the modesty of the third person and the honesty of the first, of being caught up to the third heaven.1 It was an experience where God allowed him a window into the beauty and wonder and joy of paradise. I wish he’d share more. This is an extraordinary depth of glory.
And yet, it also goes deep into hurt. He describes, also a little cryptically, this thorn in the flesh. We can only really speculate at what it was, except that we know that it was in his flesh (and so, scholars speculate, likely a bodily ailment) and that it was straight out of hell. This is a deep place of pain and limitation and struggle for Paul. It costs him. It hurts. And yet, here’s the part which gets us: Jesus allows this.
Why?
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
What is this?
It is an insight into the way of the deep life. Of the life that more truly and beautifully inhabits the heart and knowledge of God. It is Paul’s own experience of glory and grief, of heavenly vision and of hurting pain, where both have been avenues into the heart of the Father.
This is the road to depth.
It speaks to our own moments of beautiful intimacy with Him, of joy and gratitude and answered prayer and spiritual insight. The experience of the heavenly is the road to depth. May we ever see greater glimpses of our homeland.
And it speaks into our moments of greatest pain. Where we wept by the graveside or received that diagnosis. Where we have been excluded or bedridden or opposed or bullied. Where we have received the very messengers of hell itself. And yet, in these exact places, we find an invitation from the Lord to a new way of being.
To feeling strong and victorious? No way.
To feeling conceit in how perfectly manicured our spiritual life looks? Not a chance.
But to the deeper way. Where our very places of weakness become places of potential: potential to be liberated from the enslaving obsession with looking impressive and being able; potential for our lives to become not monuments to our abilities but altars for His power; potential for us to learn that true love says Yes both in when we are full of joyful gratitude and when we can only whisper it through strangled tears. For so He gave us His Yes from the cross.
This is not flimsy spirituality of hedonistic comfort. It is not a miserable acquisence to defeat. It is the spirituality of third heavens and thorns, of gutter and garbage, of glory and grace.
Friends, come deeper in. He leads in every situation, in every moment. And the end of every road He permits you to walk upon invites you deeper into His measureless heart.
Reflect:
Consider a place of pain in your life.
Track with Paul. It’s not wrong to ask Him to take it. Paul did. Do so. He is the God of miracles and the Father of all goodness. Bring Him your real desires.
But, if you find yourself on the other side of this prayer, open yourself to the possibility that He may be working a new thing in you.
Ask Him to show you how this limitation and wound may be a journey deeper into His heart and to a source of strength that does not come from you, but Him.
Wait on Him. And treasure up what you find.
Pray:
Father,
I ask you for heavenly insight.
Show me the wonder and bounty and beauty of your place:
Your values, your world, your heart.
May hope live in me in such measures
That it bursts from me—
Like heavenly rays—
Into my every word and perspective and idea and act.
And Father,
In those pains you have chosen to permit,
For this little time,
I feel them. They hurt.
And yet, I ask that you redeem me within it:
Redeem me from self-obsession to the freedom of self-forgetfulness;
Redeem me from my small ambition and limited abilities to the manifestation of your awesome power;
Redeem me from the conditional Yes of the comfortable to the enduring Yes of the faithful;
That I may walk the deeper way,
That leads in all things
To glories unimaginable,
In the magnificence of your heart.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Joshua 18-19 | Psalm 46
The third heaven is what we could simply call heaven. Paul’s language reflects the idea of the skies and then space as the first and second heavens. The third heaven, then, is that place of God, beyond the heavens we see, and into the very paradise of God.