Someone has said that a person’s strength is found when, like a tea bag, you are thrown into boiling hot water.
I would make weak tea.
When I am in hot water
well
I simply become
weaker.
I would have made a great first responder, as I do great in stressful situations that pop up out of nowhere. I do not even think, I simply respond, adapting to whatever comes my way. Give me blood and physical brokenness, give me problem-solving, give me an emergency, I would be
clear, calm, cool at a cucumber.
But, the longer I am steeped in the hot water of brokenness in relationships, the weaker I become. I become weak to the point of motionless, lifeless.
As our three kids have grown and gotten older, I sometimes see that they too have been infused with the same weak leaves.
Like their weak mother, a shaky relationship, or conversation can break them, immobilize them making it nearly impossible to think of anything else. Oh, we are all good at compartmentalizing for a little while, but eventually our bag breaks, and our leaves end up sinking to the bottom of the tea cup.
My oldest daughter loves, what I call ‘gourmet’ tea. You know, the kind you buy by the pound, and it is not steeped in a bag, but in a metal diffuser. No leaves get out because of a broken bag. They are protected in their metal cage, and will not be settling to the bottom of the cup.
They are protected by the strength of the diffuser.
The cloth around those precious tea leaves is what is supposed to hold them together, but it is so thin, so fragile.
To perform best, the leaves need to be surrounded by something stronger, like metal, because we are all infused with weakness.
We too need to recognize that our strength does not come from within ourselves, but what we have surrounding us, protecting us. It is what we are covered, clothed in that provides our strength.
Proverbs 31:25 tells us that “she is clothed in strength and dignity and laughs without fear of the future.”
The strength and dignity we have do not come from within, they are what Christ has provided by his love and sacrifice. As children of the Father God, we are protected by His loving hands. It is His hands that provide the strength and dignity that is available to us … but we do not always remember that.
Our own strength is weak, His covering us is what infuses strength.
No milk and sugar are needed.
