Do you like to boast?
It’s not always obvious, but we very frequently compare ourselves, our abilities, our experiences, our faith and our relationships to those of others.
And what happens if we boast in something, only to be found out to be lying or obscuring the truth?
Confidence in us is destroyed and our good name may be ruined.
So surely, not boasting at all would be the better course of action. How strange it is, then, that the apostle Paul encourages boasting?
The thing is, he encourages boasting, not in our strengths, as we so often do, but in our weaknesses.
But why would we boast in our weaknesses at all?
What St Paul is getting at, is that in the sight of God, our strengths aren’t worth boasting about. When we boast, what we’re really saying is, "Look at how much I have achieved for myself."
Where is the room for God in such a statement?
Boastfulness in our strengths betrays little regard for God. Who needs God, who has everything by means of one’s own strengths?
Our strengths aren’t worth boasting about, but our weaknesses? That’s a different story.
We know St Paul had a weakness of some sort - he called it "a thorn in the flesh" (II Cor. 12:7).
But his weakness - and ours - serve to remind us how deeply we depend on God.
Indeed, instead of moaning about our thorns in the flesh, whatever they may be, St Paul challenges us to boast in them, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (II Cor. 12:9, 10).
It’s not our strengths but our weaknesses that show us how much we need the Lord. Our thorns in the flesh strip away our illusions of grandeur and show us the only one to whom we may go for help in any situation of life, is the Lord.
In His love, God takes up our weaknesses, "messengers of Satan" though they are (II Cor. 12:7), and turns them to our good.
God’s love and might are such, that even the worst efforts of his arch enemy the devil, cannot but serve His plan for us.
So, if we’re going to boast at all, let’s boast in our thorns in the flesh, for they are the tools God uses to drive us to Him.
And above that, boast in Jesus Christ, whose life, death and resurrection have shown us God’s power to save, whose own crown of thorns brought us to know God’s goodness, love and power over all things - even death itself.