The Upside-Down Wisdom

(from a letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth)

In a busy seaside city called Corinth, a small group of Christians met together in somebody's house, and out in the streets the clever people were laughing at them.

"You say God saved the whole world through a man who was nailed to a cross? A man who looked weak? A man who looked like he lost? What a foolish thing to believe."

The Christians grew frightened. They began to wonder if the clever people might be right.

So a man named Paul, who loved them, sat down and wrote them a letter. The very first thing he told them was that the clever people were right about one thing.

The cross DOES look foolish. To people who only count cleverness, it looks like the worst idea there ever was. A Savior who does not fight back. A King with no crown but a crown of thorns. A rescue that looks exactly like losing.

Then Paul wrote down the thing he most wanted them to hold onto, and he wrote it for you too.

God is not impressed by the things that impress us.

God looked out over the whole wide world, full of strong people and clever people and people so sure of themselves, and he did not reach for the loudest or the quickest. He bent down low, low, low, and gathered up the small ones, the forgotten ones, the ones who felt foolish, the ones nobody else picked. He knew exactly who he was choosing.

Because if he had used the strong to mend the world, the strong would have said, "Look what WE did." God wanted them to know that the rescue was never something we could do for ourselves. It was a gift, carried in nail-pierced hands.

And that cross, the one the clever people laughed at, was the wisest and strongest thing that ever happened. When Jesus looked the weakest, hanging there, aching, alone, he was winning the biggest battle there has ever been. He was carrying every small, foolish-feeling, weak-feeling one of us home.

So if you ever feel small, dear heart, if you ever feel like the one who does not measure up, listen to what Paul told them.

You are exactly the kind of person God loves to choose.

He does not wait for you to be cleverer. He does not wait for you to be stronger. He looks at you, just as you are, and his heart leans toward you, and he says, mine.

The world measures with a ruler marked big and fast and clever and strong.

God took that ruler and turned it upside down.

In the lamplight of that little house in Corinth, the frightened people read Paul's letter out loud to one another, and they went very still, because it turned out they were the very ones God had picked. Paul was not finished with them yet. He had more to tell them about how small, chosen people fit together.