It's no secret that we are like wrung out washcloths lately. At least that's what one of my pastors said to me from the top of the stairs today. We make it through every new task with fortitude and determination, and little delight--we know that we find the goodness of God in the land of the living, but what about when all around looks like the land of the dead?

That's when the goodness of God is hard to find.

Today our congregation was a wrung out washcloth. Some caught breath in their throats, some swiped the backs of the hands across wet cheeks, some stuffed wadded tissues in their pockets, and some just let the silent tears roll down their faces, some didn't cry at all--but I think I can say with assurance that today, weeping of the heart was the portion of Christian Fellowship Center.

A passage was read today that I checked and rechecked--how could I have missed this very crucial verse? How could I have not ever seen this before? II Corinthians, that bold and beautiful book, opens with some thoughts on affliction and suffering. And here is the comfort to me today:

For we do not want you to be unaware...that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life, indeed we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead and who delivered us from such great peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us.

I have set the belief high on my creed that God won't give me more than I can handle. And so when it feels more than my strength can bear, I grow resilient, immovable, I flex my spiritual muscles and grin and, well, bear it anyway.

Today I am set free from something: my strength.

Because here, today, and tomorrow and every tomorrow, we are burdened beyond our strength. This is too much. This pain. This wringing out. These bodies of death. These things are beyond our strength. These things make me want to put my head down on my desk and cry.

Yet, it because of these things that I can say, with Paul, that He will yet deliver us. He hasn't yet.

But He will.