I’ve been thinking a lot about limits lately. I don’t like to admit I have them. Limits to time, energy, patience and resources. Limits—endless limits.
I feel limits close in at the end of the day when I am running on fumes. These limits press hard when my body fails and my mind falters. It is in my weakest moments that I feel limits keenly. Our world likes to persuade us that we are limitless. If we just put our mind to it we can do it. Where there is a will there is a way, right?
Not always.
Our attempts to live limitless try to persuade us this is strength. Weakness is uncomfortable so we don’t stop, we just keep going. We push harder, run further, stretch to the point of breaking—and sometimes we do break. But what if limits were not weakness? What if limits did more than just confine and restrain us?
What if in our limits we find something more, find something outside ourselves that is true strength?
God has set limits.
He has limited our days and defined boundaries for the world we live in. He reminds us that our strength will wane and without him we will falter. He alone is limitless. He is our strength when we are our weak, our help in times of trouble. Sometimes I am just running too busy to listen—too busy to stop, to understand that to be weak is to be strong. Strong not because I accomplish anything great or overcome the insurmountable, but because He DID.
It’s far too easy for me to run until I fall. I’m being challenged to fall willingly before I collapse. To fall on my knees in quiet surrender and accept all I simply can not do—can not be. If we, as parents, eagerly pick our children up to carry them when tired, how much more does our lovingly father ache to do the same for us? Why do we insist to run on fumes when God, in his strength, can help us soar?
In a world that is uncomfortable with limits, I find more comfort in acknowledging that I have them.
