I sat at the fast-food restaurant, watching the crowd. No striking faces, no remarkable beauty—simply the old, overlooked, and weary sharing a meal. Children with Down syndrome either sat on the laps of their parents or clung to their hands. Elderly women quietly chatted and slowly ate, waistlines long since gone. My brother and I blended in nicely. My brother suffers from severe mental illness, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. I will soon be caring for him as my mom relinquishes nearly five decades of sacrificial love. 

Solidarity flooded my heart, quickly followed by the familiar feeling of weakness. I looked at my brother with memories of his illness going all the way back to age nine. Many people had graciously complimented my parents on the beautiful and obedient eight children they were raising. But we did not feel “normal,” nor were we strong and put-together. Privately, we were weak and broken, struggling through the agonies of mental illness. Publicly, my brother’s deep suffering made our family vulnerable to the scrutiny of society. His illness was unpredictable, never socially understood or acceptable, and often violent. Though the Lord has mercifully sustained my brother's life, he is currently still sick and needy. For well over thirty years, we often resented this place of weakness, but in hindsight, my brother’s trauma had been the school in which we learned that God is not offended by weakness. In fact, he is drawn to it. Our world values strength, beauty, power, and success. God values weakness. Most of the time, he is the only one who willingly steps into our most broken and weak places to bring peace and true hope.

As a teen and even a young married adult, I struggled so much with this place of weakness because it was painful. My flesh yearned for success and happiness. As Christians, we know that true happiness and joy are only found in Christ, but my weakness exposed my heart. My identity and confidence do not abide in strength, but in weakness. I had to face this troubling paradox and let go of my perception of where grace is found. Grace proceeds from the One who loves us in our weakness and draws near to us. Understanding and embracing this paradox did not happen overnight; it took decades. And I’m still learning.

Most of us will face this bitterly beautiful paradox in some form or another. (It is bitter to our flesh as we die to our worldly understanding, but it is beautiful to our spirit that has been made new in Christ.) The Lord in his providence will allow all of us on this side of eternity to experience various kinds of weakness. The questions we must ask ourselves are: Do we believe God’s grace exists in weakness? And will we allow our good and wise God to put his lens on our spiritually untrained eyes to see as he sees? The older and hopefully wiser I become, the more I believe that weakness is the exact thing God uses to train the eyes of our hearts to reveal his love for us. Your life’s circumstances might not include mental illness. It could be something totally different yet equal in the degree of suffering and weakness it brings. Whatever brings you to your knees provides an opportunity to bow your head and ask for eyes to behold him in your weakness.

Beholding Christ is the only way the paradox makes sense. When Christ is our glory and the lifter of our heads, we can now look with new eyes at people who are broken and circumstances that are unspeakably hard (Ps. 3:3). This does not mean that we call evil good and good evil (Isa. 5:20). Mental and physical brokenness is not what God originally intended in Eden. What it does mean is that we do not look at life’s greatest places of weakness through an earthly-only perspective. Instead, we have hope because of God’s compassion in our suffering and his eternal plan to redeem ALL that is broken to himself (Rev. 21:5). He is drawn to the weak. He shows compassion to the downcast. He delights in the humble and rejects the proud. We see this all over Scripture.

One of my favorite stories is found in 2 Samuel when King David discovers that his closest friend, Jonathan, killed in battle, had a hidden son named Mephibosheth. After David was made king in place of King Saul, David asked, “Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (2 Sam. 9:1). To David’s delight, there was one named Mephibosheth. Unlike his kingly grandfather, Mephibosheth was lame in his feet after his nurse had dropped him. Once brought into the palace, Mephibosheth fell on his face to pay homage to King David, and David said, “Do not fear, for I will show you kindness” (9:7). David restored to him all that had belonged to Saul’s family and added, “Mephibosheth your master’s grandson shall always eat at my table” (9:10).

This story always brings me to tears. As a lame man, Mephibosheth would have been shunned from society, hidden from all that is good and lovely. He was an outcast. His disability made him weak and undesirable. And yet, the most beautiful man in all Israel, King David, sought him out and made him dine at the king’s table. This is such an expression of what God does with us. He looks at the unlovely, the weak, and the broken, and extends mercy. He gives a crown of glory instead of shame. Paul writes of this in 1 Corinthians: “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world” (1:26-28a). Why? “So that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1:29). When you have nothing, you cannot boast; you can only receive.

Somehow, God delights in this.

God demonstrated his eternal plan through the sin and weakness of Adam and Eve with his promise to send the Head Crusher (Gen. 3:15). His good plan reaches a crescendo of victory through the weakness of Christ (Acts 2:23-36). No place do we see this more than in the cross. In Revelation, Jesus is the Lion but he is also portrayed as the “Lamb . . . as though it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). He invites his lovely bride to the marriage supper and to her “it was granted to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure” (Rev. 19:7, 8). Sin had crippled his bride, yet because of the cross, Jesus clothed her with beauty and seated her in the heavenly places. This is how God transforms weakness—through himself. He takes what is ugly and weak because of sin and restores it through the broken, weak body of Christ. One day, my brother will dine as a whole man at this glorious feast. So will you and I.

While we wait for Christ’s return and our glorious resurrection, I have surrendered myself to the fact that there is much weakness ahead. Each place of vulnerability and need in our lives is a divine appointment to behold Christ and trust our Heavenly Father. We can either press into this hard but glorious truth or stiff-arm the God who draws near in our weakness. 

So cry out to God for his help. He is near. He is near to the broken-hearted and saves those crushed in spirit (Ps. 34:18). There is no magic formula or sugar-coating of what is hard. Our weakness can feel like shame and grief. But our honest cries bring an answer from God’s holy hill as he delights in us (Ps. 3:4). The same David who celebrated the lame man also cried out to God because his own life’s circumstances humbled him and threatened to sweep him away. David was looking for the One who would truly restore all that was broken in his life (Ps. 16:5-11).  As we look to Christ, our faces are radiant. Though weak, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).