Called to Carry the Weak
The tiring truth is that we weaklings are demanding. If you go out, in the name of Christ, to call the weak and the needy, we'll turn up--weak and in need! If you don't want us, don't call us!
We have not right to sulk, but we do; we wish we were through with our sin, but we aren't; we'd like to be able to stand on God's grace without having to continuously lean on you, but we can't right now. We came because you called us in the name of God, and we believed the good news. Sometimes people act as though the invitation for us weak and needy people to come to Christ dissolves our needs--but it dosn't! We come, weak and needy!
But many in the church want winners--self-motivated, go-getters who can run for miles on a glass of water and an occasional smile of appreciation--people who show no signs of fatigue, and if they do, they refuse our help with a pained grin and plough on.
To bet only on winners or on those who give you reason to believe they soon will be winners in pagan! To choose only those who cannot burden you is unlike Christ. To choose only those who can help you is to be an exploiter, a taker.
The "burden" of the weak is felt especially by ministers and other leaders who are trying to "glorify God through the growth of a big church." Thees leaders are usually the ones who think up the programs to make the church grow, they are the ones who try to involve everyone in these programs, and they're the ones who get mad when the weak ones won't get involved...
But the church is not a tage on which the strong "do their thing." It isn't the minister's chariot on which he rides from glory to greater glory; it isn't an instrument through which the leaders minister to God. It is a body of people to who they are to minister for God. These brothers and sisters are not a program. People rightly resent being used by anybody. They don't like being used by prime-time television evangelists who build monuments to themselves and beg hard-working people to sustain their opulent lifgestyle; and they don't like being used by fired-up ministers and leaders who are pursuing personal agendas.
Listen to this from Dietric Bonhoffer: "It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated." It's only when I feel a responsibility toward my brothers and sisters as my berdens to bear that they cease to be tools for my schemes. If I view them as burdens, I can't view them as toys or pawns to play with or use. To patch them up just so they can help me fulfill my dreams or my projects--my "destiny"--to do that is to make tools out of them! To make their burdens mine--to make them my burdens--and to carry them is to fulfill the law of Christ.
The God of the Towel pp. 241-243
by Jim McGuiggan
