Pattern all your calculating to: Christ will come again - Day 7
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
8 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Jesus’ whole story is foolishness and weakness. The story that God has written in the world goes against all human expectations. That the God of power who made all things would come in human form, born in lowliness to the family of a common labourer, that is not how the story of the King of kings is supposed to start. And that this King of kings would end up dying, dying on a cross, the most humiliating way that the Romans could imagine to execute people, makes the story even more preposterous. The story of Jesus is foolishness and weakness. But it is the story of God’s interaction with human beings.
God continues to tell a story of foolishness and weakness in the world. A story where the downtrodden are lifted up not by exercising their strength, but rather in their weakness taking up the path of Jesus. A story where the wise and powerful of this world are revealed to be less than wise and less than powerful, by the humility and weakness of the other.
We are invited to accept the humble way – the weak way – the foolish way – for in walking that way we discover it to be none other than the wisdom of God and strength of God. God who has saved the world through his foolish plan, invites us to give up our plans of power and wisdom and find in him a different way.
PRAYER:
God, whose way of working in the world seems weak and foolish to human beings, we rejoice that it has found us. By your plan you have saved us, bringing us out of darkness into your marvelous light. Teach us the way of humility, to follow you and your kingdom of weakness and foolishness, and thereby to find life and hope. In Jesus’ name. Amen.