Sentilong Ozukum
Lately I have been thinking of Paul and the thorn in his flesh as I engrossed myself with Max Lucado’s In the Grip of Grace. Paul knew the angst of unanswered prayer. “Three times I begged the Lord to take this thorn away from me.” This was no ordinary prayer. But God’s response was as clear as his request: My Grace is sufficient for you.
What was it that tormented Paul? I can only guess.
Temptation?
“I want to do the things that are good, but I do not do them. I do not do the good things I want to do, but I do the bad things that I do not want to do.” Was Paul battling with the flesh? Perhaps. After all, he was a single man. Was Paul asking God to deliver him from the thirst of forbidden waters?
Yet no person appreciated God’s Grace like Paul did. No pen articulated Grace like Paul did. We remove Paul’s epistles from the Bible and we are left with a fuzzy picture of Grace.
Enemies?
Perhaps the problem was not the flesh but foes. “I have been near death many times. Five times the Jews have given me their punishment of thirty nine lashes with a whip. Three different times I was beaten with rods. One time I was almost stoned to death. Three times I was in the ship that wrecked, and one of those times I spent a night and a day in the sea. I have gone on many travels and have been in danger from rivers, thieves, my own people, the Jews and those who are not Jews.”
Yet it was Paul who wrote the classic chapter on Love-1 Corinthians 13. The man who was tortured and beaten proclaimed, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
His ailing health?
After all the hardships and travels, surely Paul’s body would have been pushed to the limits. He wrote to the Galatians, “See what large letters I use to write this myself…You could have taken out your eyes and given them to me if that were possible.”
Remember the Damascus experience. Paul was left blinded for three days after God got his attention with a bright light. Maybe he never fully recovered. His clear vision of the cross might have come out of a clear vision of anything else.
Yet Paul had such great insights. While the rest of the world was busy with the world, Paul was seeing visions too great for words.
No wonder God told him, “My Grace is sufficient for you.”
Life is no doubt full of thorns. Perhaps you are facing a big prickly thorn in your life right now. Maybe your flesh is pierced by a person or a problem or both. The thorn pierces through the fabric of your cloth, your skin and into the soul of your heart. And when you ask God to remove it and He says, “My Grace to save your soul is sufficient for you,” will you be content?
Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t remove the temptations from my life. Perhaps if He did, I might rely on my strength alone instead of His Grace. His grace is sufficient for my sin. Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t remove the people who don’t like me? Perhaps He wants me to love them like He loves me. His Grace is sufficient for my self-image.
God would prefer an occasional limp than a perpetual strut. And if it takes a thorn for Him to make His point, He loves us enough not to pluck it. God has every right to say No to us. We have every right to say Thanks to him. His Grace is sufficient for us.
(Sentilong Ozukum is the author of Campus Blues and is also the editor of Fingerprints magazine. He lives at Mokokchung.)
